Agriculture in Tajikistan

Tajikistan is a highly agrarian country, with its rural population at more than 70% and agriculture accounting for 60% of employment and around 30% of GDP. As is typical of economies dependent on agriculture, Tajikistan has low income per capita: back in the Soviet period (1990) Tajikistan was the poorest republic with a staggering 45% of its population in the lowest income “septile” (Uzbekistan, the next poorest in the Soviet ranking, had 34% of the population in the lowest income group). In 2006 Tajikistan still had the lowest income per capita among the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries: $1,410 (purchasing power parity (PPP) equivalents) compared with nearly $12,000 for Russia. The low income and the high agrarian profile justify and drive the efforts for agricultural reform since 1991 in the hope of improving the population’s well being.

After decades of steady agricultural growth during the Soviet period, with the volume of agricultural output trebling between 1960 and 1988, independent Tajikistan, similarly to most CIS countries, suffered a precipitous transition decline as the index of Gross Agricultural Output (GAO) dropped by 55% between 1991 and 1997. Agricultural production has shown remarkable recovery since 1997 and today GAO is almost back to the 1991 level after more than doubling from the lowest point in 1997.

Cotton and wheat are the two main cash crops in Tajikistan, cultivated on nearly 70% of the cropped area (30% under cotton, 36% under wheat, 9% under other cereals). Cotton fiber is Tajikistan's leading agricultural export commodity, contributing 16% of total exports (it is second only to aluminium, which accounts for a staggering 60% of the country's exports). Cotton requires high temperatures and intensive irrigation, and it is primarily grown in hot river valleys: the Ferghana Valley on the Syr Darya in Northern Tajikistan (Sughd Province), the Lower Kofarnihon and Vakhsh valleys in south-western Khatlon, Kyzylsu and Panj valleys in south-eastern Khatlon, and Gissar Valley stretching west of Dushanbe to the border with Uzbekistan around the middle course of Kofarnihon River. Khatlon Province is the main cotton growing area in Tajikistan, contributing 60% of the cotton harvest; Ferghana Valley in the north of Sughd Province contributes 30% and Gissar Valley (in the Region of Republican Subordination) another 10%. The Tajik part of Zeravshan Valley in the south of Sughd Province is too cold for cotton, which grows only further west in the Uzbek part of the valley near Bukhara. The intensive irrigation of cotton in Tajikistan's valleys reduces the flow in the two large rivers feeding the Aral Sea: the Syr Darya in the Ferghana Valley in the north and the Amu Darya along the southern border with Afghanistan, which in turn relies on its tributaries Kofarnihon, Vakhsh, and Kyzylsu rivers. The "white gold" of Tajikistan, as well as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, may well have contributed to the catastrophic drying of the Aral Sea during the Soviet times and thereafter.

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Wikipedia