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Tajikistan
Agriculture
In the early 1990s, Tajikistan remained primarily an agricultural
state. In 1990 agriculture contributed 38 percent of the country's
net material product (NMP--see Glossary). Despite development
of an extensive irrigation network in the Soviet era, water supply
problems combined with Tajikistan's mountainous topography to
limit agriculture to 8 percent of the republic's land in 1990.
Some 800,000 hectares were under cultivation in 1990, of which
about 560,000 hectares were irrigated. The irrigated land was
used mostly to grow cotton; potatoes, vegetables, and grains also
were cultivated (see table 16, Appendix). In 1994 the republic
produced about 490,000 tons of vegetables and about 254,000 tons
of cereals. The dominance of cotton combined with the rapidly
growing population to render Tajikistan unable to meet domestic
consumption requirements for some basic foodstuffs, especially
meat and dairy products, in the last years of the Soviet era,
even though the republic produced a surplus of fruits, vegetables,
and eggs. In the early 1990s, about 98 percent of agricultural
labor remained almost entirely unmechanized.
Through the mid-1990s, agricultural output continued to decline
precipitously as a consequence of the civil war and the awkward
transition to a post-Soviet economy. By 1995 overall production
was estimated at about half the 1990 level, and shortages continued
in urban areas. Besides the civil war, low prices for agricultural
products and a shortage of animal feed contributed to the decline.
Hardly any privatization of collective farms had occurred by the
mid-1990s.
Cotton is by far the most important crop in Tajikistan's agrarian
economy. In parts of the republic, 85 percent of the land was
planted to cotton by the late 1980s, a figure that even republic
officials described as excessive. At the same time, the average
cotton yield per hectare was about half that achieved in the United
States. Cotton production declined in the early 1990s. In 1993
Tajikistan produced about 754,000 tons, a drop of 30 percent from
the 1991 figure.
Although cotton is fundamental to Tajikistan's economy, the
republic's rewards for cotton production in the Soviet system
were disappointing. About 90 percent of the harvest was shipped
elsewhere for processing. Tajikistani factories produced thread
from some of the cotton harvest, but, by the end of the Soviet
era, more than 90 percent of the cotton thread that was spun went
elsewhere to be turned into finished goods. In 1990 the two southern
provinces of Qurghonteppa and Kulob produced roughly two-thirds
of the republic's cotton, but they processed only 1 percent of
the crop locally.
Despite widespread concern about overemphasis on cotton cultivation,
the post-civil war government attempted to expand the production
of the country's most important cash crop. For example, in 1995
it mandated an increase over the preceding year of 10,000 hectares
in land assigned to cotton. However, the cotton output remained
far below both the government quota and the production levels
of the late Soviet era. Independent Tajikistan continued to send
most of its cotton crop elsewhere--mainly to CIS countries--for
processing.
Data as of March 1996
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