Second Bread: Potato Cultivation and Food Security in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Kyrgyzstan experienced a remarkable boom in potato production over the past thirty years, driven almost entirely by small farms. Today, potatoes are at once the backbone of national food security, a central source of income for many Kyrgyz households, and a non-trivial source of export earnings. This paper documents the central characteristics of the Kyrgyz potato economy and explains the conditions of its emergence and resilience. We show that Kyrgyzstan’s potato economy is driven by three main features: land reforms that dispersed ownership of land early in the post-Soviet transition, dense social networks that connect producers to input suppliers and markets, and a match between the potato and the country’s mountainous terrain and continental climate. Together, these features have given rise to a food security model that leverages the potato’s well-known nutritional qualities, its cultural status as a food staple across the region, and Kyrgyzstan’s geography and climate. We term this the Kyrgyz Potato Model (KPM). Unlike critics that stress the inefficiencies of Kyrgyz potato production, we highlight the model’s strengths: it is extremely effective in feeding citizens, generates much-needed household incomes, and has been remarkably resilient in the face of recent global economic crises.