How Uzbek farmers reduce the number of agrotechnical operations without losing yield

The general principle is the same everywhere: to achieve the same or greater output from the land while using fewer resources, UzDaily reports.

The essence in brief

• The FOLUR–Uzbekistan project, financed by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the FAO together with the National Committee on Ecology and the Ministry of Agriculture of Uzbekistan, covers four regions of the country — from the irrigated agriculture of Khorezm to the arid territories of Kashkadarya and the ecosystems of Karakalpakstan.
• At the demonstration plot of the "Baraka Baltimor" farm in the Khorezm region, when growing cotton, one of the two chiseling operations was abandoned, the number of irrigations was reduced from five to three, and the consumption of ammophos — from 300 to 100 kg per hectare, which saves about 35 liters of fuel and reduces production costs to 4.07 million soums per hectare.
• In three mountainous districts of the Kashkadarya region, rainwater harvesting technologies are being tested — terraces, trenches, crescent-shaped water-retaining structures — and in the village of Sarchashma, winter spring water is frozen in the form of ice: four installations formed 1,600 cubic meters of ice, yielding about1,000 cubic meters of water when melted.
• In Karakalpakstan, drought-resistant alternatives to traditional crops are being tested — wheat, barley, triticale, rye, mung bean, chickpea and safflower, with chickpea already being considered as a possible replacement for rice.

Cotton with fewer operations

At a demonstration plot of 30 hectares in the Yangibazar district of the Khorezm region, traditional and reduced tillage systems are being directly compared. Under traditional technology, chiseling is carried out twice — in the experimental variant this operation was abandoned entirely, the number of harrowings and smoothing operations was reduced from three to one, and irrigations — from five to three. For sowing, a special no-till seeder brought from Brazil is used, allowing seeds to be placed at a specified depth and phosphorus fertilizers to be applied directly near the zone of future root system development. According to the head of the farm, Turoboy Radjabov, the technology was first tested on 80 hectares together with neighboring farmers, and this year its application was expanded to 200 hectares.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture Jamshid Abduzukhurov noted: "It is necessary to take into account the efficiency of using every cubic meter of water, every kilogram of fertilizer and every agrotechnical operation."

The preliminary yield forecast at the experimental plot is 55–60 centners per hectare; exact data will appear after the completion of harvesting.

Water in the mountains — from terraces to ice

At three demonstration sites in the Kamashinsky district of the Kashkadarya region, different rainwater harvesting technologies are being tested, adapted to the specific slope of the terrain — gradoni terraces, trenches, strips for intercepting surface runoff and crescent-shaped water-retaining structures. Local species of trees and shrubs are planted on the plots — pistachio, almond, mulberry, elm, kandym and saxaul. An even more unusual technology is being tested in the village of Sarchashma in the Shahrisabz district: winter spring water is frozen into ice using four vertical installations, taking advantage of naturally low temperatures, and when it melts, water is obtained for practical use already in the warm season.

Deputy FAO Representative in Uzbekistan Sherzod Umarov emphasized a fundamental point of the entire project: "Each technology must be tested taking into account local soil, water and climatic conditions."

Different crops and the digital basis of decisions

In the Chimbay and Nukus districts of Karakalpakstan, alternative varieties of cereals and legumes are being tested — wheat, barley, triticale, rye, mung bean, chickpea and safflower. Diversification is seen as a way to increase the resilience of farms to climatic risks and market fluctuations, and preliminary data on chickpea already allow this crop to be considered as one of the alternatives to rice in water-deficient regions. All decisions on the selection of project territories rely on a digital basis — within the framework of FOLUR–Uzbekistan, a spatial analysis was conducted on more than 25 data sets and over 40 thematic maps of the state of lands, vegetation, relief and soil salinization were prepared.

Not only agriculture

The environmental component of the project goes beyond mere farming practices. In the Karauzyak, Beruniy and Kamashinsky districts, nurseries are planned to be created with the participation of local communities for growing plants adapted to local conditions — with a model of payments for ecosystem services, simultaneously restoring ecosystems and creating additional income for the rural population. Separate measures are aimed at supporting wild fauna: on the territory of the Khorezm National Nature Park, a mixture of alfalfa, wheat and rapeseed has been sown on 1.5 hectares, and in the Lower Amu Darya Biosphere Reserve, on another 3 hectares — alfalfa and wheat, intended to provide a forage base for the Bukhara deer and other species.

Other facets of the Uzbek agenda

FOLUR demonstration plots are not the only place where Uzbekistan is trying new approaches to land. In the Fergana Valley, the FAO has opened three farmer field schools, where training is stretched over the entire season and is built around the crops of a specific district — potatoes, greenhouse vegetables and raspberries. The format is different: the schools work with the farmers themselves, while FOLUR shows ready-made technologies to specialists and international partners.

There is also an institutional layer. The environmental part of the project — nurseries, payments for ecosystem services — is developing against the backdrop of a general regulatory reform: Uzbekistan recently switched environmental expertise to international standards, having studied, among other things, the Kazakh experience. Both processes point to one vector: the impact on nature is increasingly assessed in advance rather than after the fact.

Finally, the resource constraints to which all these practices respond also work in the opposite direction. While within the country they are trying to get more from every cubic meter of water and hectare of land, the meat deficit is being addressed beyond its borders: at a business forum, a proposal was voiced to lease up to 50,000 hectares in Kazakhstan for livestock fattening. The tasks are different, but the root is the same — limited land and water amid a growing population.

Author's conclusion

The value of the FOLUR project lies not in individual technological novelties — reduced tillage, rainwater harvesting or crop diversification have long been known to agricultural science individually — but in the fact that all these solutions are being tested simultaneously in different natural and climatic zones of a single country with their own specific constraints. It is precisely the comparison of the results of the demonstration plots in Khorezm, Kashkadarya and Karakalpakstan that should show which specific practices are worth scaling up further, and which will remain local solutions applicable only in a narrow set of conditions. For now, most of the data — including the final cotton yield in Khorezm — remains preliminary, and the real test of the effectiveness of all these approaches will begin only after the completion of a full agricultural cycle.