Contesting Rural Resources: Emerging ‘Forms’ of Agrarian Production in Uzbekistan

Abstract

The most recent land reform in Uzbekistan, in which Large Farm Enterprises (LFEs) were split into medium-sized fermer enterprises, left, alongside the country's overwhelming majority of small dekhan peasants, continued strong state intervention in agrarian production. Three ‘forms’ (rather than ‘modes’) of production emerged: (1) state-ordered production of cotton and wheat; (2) commercial production, in particular of rice; and (3) household production of other food staples, including wheat and rice. These production ‘forms’ or processes are characterised by distinct input and output relations, terms of trade and technical requirements. They interrelate through competition for limited resources, such as land, water and other inputs, rather than competition amongst the actors themselves (the state, the new medium-sized fermers and the small dekhan peasants). A contest over resources is particularly evident between the (state-ordered) cotton crop and the (commercial) rice crop in the case study on which our argument is based, namely the province of Khorezm, a downstream part of the Amu Darya river basin, in the western part of the country.