News Other countries USA: Evidence of a healthy national economy may be found in the strength of the timber industryKyrgyzstan: Irrigation needs more funding to boost agricultural production in Kyrgyzstan
In Kyrgyzstan, the past snowy winter will benefit crops, farmers believe. Unlike the last year, there will be no problems with providing farmers with seeds of agricultural crops this season. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, farmers have been fully provided with seeds.
To ensure a good watering in the summer, irrigation networks are being repaired now. This year, the ministry plans to allocate 106 million soms for repairing irrigation networks. Last year, 178 million soms were spent for this purpose. Currently, 23 percent of repair works have been completed. More than 5,185 kilometers of canals are ready for water supply.
Finance Minister Olga Lavrova stressed that the construction of canals is costly. For example, one of these facilities costs more than 300 million soms, and such project cannot be executed in one year.
Irrigation is a key resource for crop development in the country. In Soviet times, agriculture accounted for more than 50% of GDP in Kyrgyzstan, mainly due to irrigated areas. “Kyrgyzstan took second and third places on crops per hectare on irrigated areas,” expert Kalkash Batyrkanov said. “The republic harvested very high yields. Even the Kochkor region in the Naryn oblast, located at an altitude of about two thousand meters above sea level, harvested around 40 quintals of wheat per hectare, and the more favorable lands – up to 70 quintals.”
Much attention was given to irrigation, and many new canals and reservoirs were built, and many of them are still operating.
Today, the yields have dropped dramatically. Over the past 20 years, less than half of the amount needed to improve irrigation facilities was allocated annually.
According to the National Sustainable Development Strategy for 2013-2017 (NSDS), the degradation of agricultural land is a significant threat to food security of the country and moves this threat from a category of environmental threat to that of threats to sustainable national development. The problem is further complicated by weak land management capacity. Works to restore soil fertility are not sufficient. The country lacks its own production of mineral fertilizers, every year the amount of fertilizers applied to the soil decreases.
The current length of canals does not meet the existing agricultural needs. Some of them, due to lack of funding and timely repair, need to be overhauled. All this leads to significant losses for the agriculture and population. There is an annual growth of degraded agricultural land, intense salinization and waterlogging of irrigated land. Due to the poor technical condition of irrigation canals, water loss from the catchment to fields totals more than 40%.
During the growing season, from April to October, there is a shortage of water resources, which leads to conflicts among the local population. Water User Associations (WUAs) help to effectively manage water resources and prevent conflicts.
After the collapse of collective farms, the irrigation networks were without control, and yet someone had to be responsible for their operation. Water User Associations have taken this responsibility, said hydraulic engineer Ibragim Baikarimov, Chairman of a WUA in the south of the country.
The Association unites 1835 members, small farmers who have 1050 hectares of irrigated land. WUA elected its management board, an audit committee, and a commission to resolve disputes which includes the elders, who have a great influence among the local community.
WUA has ten canals and keeps one irrigator for each canal, and they distribute the water among the farmers. The WUA fields differ noticeably from the others as they are well maintained, and the crops are better there.
Creation of agricultural cooperatives will help improve the quality of irrigated land by restoring irrigation systems, most of which are destroyed in the country. "Hydraulic networks and canals of the national irrigation system somehow still operate, but the intra-network often listed in reports in fact does not exist,” says Batyrkanov. “However, in the last ten years WUAs have been established on more than half of the irrigated areas, and they keep canals and irrigation systems in working order."
According to the NSDS, the government will finance the modernization of irrigation systems and the introduction of new irrigated agricultural lands at a pace of 10,000 hectares of new irrigated agricultural land (including reclaimed land and agricultural land that had been previously reclassified as non-agricultural land). Building a system of water supply will also perform social functions – creation of new jobs in plant farming and the conditions for the settlement of new territories.
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