Characteristics of agriculture in Uzbekistan in the years of independence

Abstract

Abstract: Agriculture plays an important role in the national economy of the Uzbekistan Republic. The article analyzes the main changes and reforms undertaken since independence. Particular attention is paid to the develop-ment of farming enterprises, structural changes in the crop area, land reclamation. Keywords: agriculture, agricultural products, farm and farmer facilities, cotton, grain, land reclamation, reforms. Deep reforms were implemented in the Uzbekistan ag-riculture after the country gained its independence. This pe-riod can be characterized as a stage of intensive agriculture development. At that time agricultural products were the main source of foreign exchange resources. They were vital for the country food and became the main area of equip-ment and technology import. Special attention was paid to the grain production. The goal was to achieve self-sufficiency, and this task was carried out by limiting the monopoly of cot -ton. For example, from 1990 to 2013, the size of cultivated areas increased from 433.2 thousand acres to 1 610.7 thousand acres, or almost 4 times. The productivity of land increased from 12.8 to 44.1 hwt/ha (Fig. 1). The harvest gross increased from 553.5 thousand tons to 6545.3 thousand tons. The size of cultivated areas was increased with re-cultivated land and areas irrigated for cotton. Moreover, a higher productivity was achieved. In 1993–2013 the amount of land planted with cotton was reduced from 1721.0 thousand hectares to 1 342.5 thou -sand hectares. Thereby the raw cotton production decreased from 4 646.3 thousand tons to 3 442.3 thousand tons.In the studied years you can easily observe the expan-sion of cultivated land with land for food. Reduction of land for cotton was much less. At that time, with the exception of pasture for cattle from the agricultural lands, reducing acre-age for feed grains in irrigated lands created a number of problems in the animal husbandry. In 1991 the agricultural sector owned 92 % of the pastures; the total pasture area de-creased by 40% due to the extremely haphazard livestock production and reduce of pasture fertility reduce without its recreating [1].One part of unsuitable pastures was included in the cat-egory of reserved lands, and the other became forest fund. Country livestock has about 13 million hectares of grazing land, most of which are located on the territory of the Karakal -pakstan Republic, as well as Bukhara, Kashkadarya and Navoi regions, where there is the bulk of grown cattle (sheep).The Tashkent, Navoi and Khorezm regions lead in live-stock productivity in the country. When it comes to gross fig -ures, Samarkand, Khorezm, Kashkadarya, Bukhara become leaders in the meat production of meat. Samarkand, Khorezm, Kashkadarya take the first place in milk production. Cities like Tashkent, Samarkand, Khorezm and Andijan are leaders in the egg production. Kashkadarya, Samarkand, Navoi, Bukhara and Djizzak are leading in the production of wool [2].