Greater than 60% of the inhabitants of Kyrgyzstan lives in rural areas and their livelihood relies upon totally on agriculture. After the land reform in 2010, about 75% of the agricultural land in Kyrgyzstan is privately held, whereas 25% is state-owned. Over 90% of the agricultural output is produced by the personal sector. With greater than 300,000 farms, the share of agriculture is 25% added worth of the GDP. Most farms are small (0.5-0.7 ha) and are run by particular person farmers. Girls make up 30% of the economically energetic inhabitants in agriculture. Information of contemporary applied sciences of cultivation remains to be a critical constraint because of lack of skilled personnel and farmers in addition to scarcity of contemporary gear and communication means. In that context, FAO, on the request of the Ministry of Agriculture and Melioration of the Kyrgyz Republic, put the wheels in movement to supply help to help creating farmers’ capability and promotion of contemporary crop administration and plant safety methods.
Right now, three-quarters of all arable land in Kyrgyzstan is privately owned, and 90% of agricultural output is produced by the personal sector. But, with greater than 60% of the inhabitants dwelling in rural areas and relying totally on agriculture for his or her livelihoods, farmers’ want for up-to-date technical data is larger than ever.
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, farmers had been left alone and helpless,” says Kalybek Mursadairov, head of the agriculture division in Kemin rayon, Chui province. “Few knew find out how to domesticate their land, which fertilizers to make use of, and which pests to battle.”
The FAO mission which is now underway is addressing that data hole by means of hands-on “farmer discipline faculties.” Consultants work with farmers to introduce new resource-saving approaches comparable to conservation agriculture and built-in pest administration.
A farmer discipline day in Samansur village introduced collectively representatives of 20 farmer discipline faculties from two rayons of Chui province.
“It’s an peculiar college however with no partitions – as a result of it’s held in a discipline,” says Kayirkul Kasylaeva of the Agrolid group, one in every of FAO’s companions on the mission. “However the discipline is a e book for the farmer.”
“Yr after 12 months, soil fertility is declining, and pests and illnesses defoliate a part of the crop,” exaplains FAO nationwide marketing consultant Omurbek Mambetov. “So the technique of the mission – along with supplying particular agricultural gear – is to supply coaching in discipline faculties to essentially the most superior and farmers, who in flip will push the data additional.”
The experimental discipline of Duishonbek Asanaliev was the scene of the latest discipline college. The sector was divided into two elements. One had been sown with “Intensive” wheat seed and cultivated as ordinary. The opposite was sown with “Janym,” an area wheat selection produced by Kyrgyz selectionists, and cultivated utilizing data obtained within the farmer discipline college. The outcomes had been noticeably higher within the second plot, and farmers determined to use their discipline college data on their very own land.
Mira Junusova, writer of the “Janym” selection, additionally took half within the experiment. She famous that the seeds had been sown in late-April however actually ought to have been planted instantly after snows had melted. When sown in early spring, this selection can yield 55-60 quintals of grain per hectare. What’s extra, “Janym” wheat doesn’t want frequent watering, grows tall and has low gluten content material. Junusova suggested farmers to make use of solely licensed seeds.
Rainfall has been low in Kyrgyzstan this 12 months and rural individuals are already taking a look at their losses. They are saying that in an prolonged interval of water shortage, FAO’s conservation agriculture applied sciences are particularly vital for the nation.
Tasin Izatov, within the neighboring Issyk-Ata rayon, cultivates 60 hectares of land and manages 50 head of Goldstein cattle. He was among the many first farmers to get entangled within the mission. “I’ve been cultivating the land for nearly 20 years however day by day I can study one thing new within the discipline college,” he says. “The extra data you purchase, the extra you perceive how little you recognize!”
