Uzbekistan's agricultural economy

the historic and vitally important Amu Darya River between Khiva and Bukhara

Under the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan was one of the centers of cotton production as the USSR tried to make itself independent of foreign cotton.  Production was mostly in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, but cotton processing, textile manufacturing and clothing manufacturing were in other Soviet republics, one of the ways the USSR tried to weave disparate republics into the one interdependent country.

cotton field ready for picking

Cotton takes a huge amount of water, so Uzbekistan drained water from the Amu Darya River to sustain its cotton.  The result was the severe depletion of water for other uses, particularly for the Aral Sea, which today is only 7% of its original size, basically non-existent.  And salinity in the groundwater is very high, so fields must be flushed several times before actually planting the cotton crop, another huge use of fresh water.

melon stand by road

Rice is another staple as are melons, fruit trees and vegetables.  There is little effort to conserve water—no drip systems, for example—in this mostly desert country.  You can see, as you drive along the very bumpy roads, how depleted the soil is and how saline.  The crops look thin.  The government is trying to move to an agricultural economy less dependent on cotton and is making some progress, but it may not make the transition in time to save its land and water, not to mention refilling the Aral Sea, which is a long-term hope.

Aral Sea's shrinking size from 1960 to 2008

Because hand-picked cotton is of higher quality than machine-harvested cotton, students are taken out of school for about 6 weeks in the late summer and fall to pick cotton.  You can see thousands of them out in the fields picking.  They must pick at least 100 pounds each day, though we heard that 220 pounds was the real requirement.  Hot and back-breaking work.

dry bed of Aral Sea with camels and rotting ships

Child labor is not uncommon, but the U.S. and Europe refuse to buy cotton picked by children.  So, Uzbekistan has laws to prohibit children under 16 from picking, but one person told us that children as young as 8 or 10 sometimes help their parents in the fields in order to make enough money for their families to survive.  Uzbekistan needs to sell into the world markets, so must comply with international child labor standards.

The rest of the cotton is machine-harvested.  This entails defoliating the cotton plants before running the harvester through the fields.  These chemicals also cause a lot of damage to the land and, no doubt, to the people working it.

women selling produce in market

In the Fergana Valley, where we started our visit to Uzbekistan, fruit trees, melons and vegetables, as well as cotton, are staples.  The melons are superb, sweet and juicy.  Apples are also quite good, though we peeled ours since the water is not safe to drink and unpeeled and uncooked fruits and vegetables aren’t safe either.  The markets are full of fresh produce, meat, eggs and chickens.

Samarkand's produce market

Uzbekistan also produces lots of root crops, beets, potatoes, several varieties of carrots and onions.  They are delicious.  Carrots, particularly large yellow carrots, are key to the national dish—plav or pilav, a mixture of meat, onions, garlic, carrots, sometimes raisins and rice.