1 | Page Conservation agriculture as a sustainable option for addressing land and water problems in Central Asia Aziz Nurbekov -1 , Tanzila Ergasheva -2 , Boubaker Dhehibi -3 , Amir Kassam -4 and Hichem Ben Salem -3 1- International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Regional office for Central Asia and the Caucasus (CAC), 100000 Tashkent, P.O. Box 4375, Uzbekistan. a.nurbekov@cgiar.org 2- Tajik Research Institute of Agricultural Economics, Tajik Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Tajikistan. tanzila.e@gmail.com 3- International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Amman, Jordan. B.Dhehibi@cgiar.org and H.BenSalem@cgiar.org 4- University of Reading, UK. amirkassam786@googlemail.com Session 1: Organization of agricultural production and land reforms Abstract After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the production performance of the agriculture sector, including horticulture, in the Central Asia region has declined sharply. At the same time, population growth has led to decrease in crop land per capita and competition for land and water resources is increasing causing increased food insecurity in the region. There is an urgent need to pilot changes in agricultural practices in the region in order to increase grain output and productivity (efficiency) in the region. Double cropping or adding a second crop to existing single crop per year systems can address the above mentioned challenges. In the irrigated areas of Central Asia farmers usually finish harvesting of winter wheat and barley during the period mid-June through mid-July and undertake next planting of these crops during the first fortnight of October. In double-cropping, timing of planting the second crop becomes limited along with pressures of harvesting the mature crop. CA technologies based on the principle of reducing tillage, retaining crop residue, and crop diversification through efficient rotations and crop and forage alternatives can be helpful in enhancing crop productivity, resource use efficiency, and soil health. However, the lack of farm implements suitable for zero-tillage seeding and the demand for crop residues as animal feed are among the major constraints for the adoption of CA technologies mainly for the smallholder farmer communities. Initial results of a survey of CA-based practices undertaken in Tajikistan showed that, double cropping of maize and mung bean, followed by common bean, soybean, vegetables, buckwheat, millet, groundnut, or sesame, has the potential of being widely adopted by small farmers. Under the prevailing scenario of increasing fuel and purchased input prices and decreasing per capita crop land, salinization of irrigated lands, drought and heat problems, and low priority to fodder production and preservation, CA can help to solve the mentioned challenges in the years to come. Background The Central Asia region is comprised of five independent republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the agriculture sector in Central Asia suffered a sharp decline in the production of arable and horticultural crops. In all the Central Asian countries, the changes in the agricultural sector during the last few decades, after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, have been enormous. The economic transformation has led to the conversion of large state and collective farms to small private farms (in Kazakhstan (partly), Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), a step which also changed the settings for the new farmers, and which significantly impacted on the availability of suitable machinery and farm power. Efforts made for a different type of post-independent economic and agricultural development in Central Asian countries is continuing in order to overcome the existing challenges and achieve national food security by intensively investing in strategic crops. There is an urgent need to pilot changes in agricultural practices in the region in order to increase grain productivity and total output. Table 1: Land resources and population and agricultural indicators of Central Asia Country Total territory (M ha) Land area (M ha) Cropland (M ha) % Agri. GDP Population (million) Per capita cropland (ha) Kazakhstan 272.49 269.7 21.5 5.3 16.5 1.3 Kyrgyzstan 19.99 19.18 1.17 25.8 5.5 0.21 Tajikistan 14.25 13.99 0.85 19.8 7.8 0.11 Turkmenistan 48.81 46.99 1.8 22.1 5.2 0.34 Uzbekistan 44.74 42.54 4.9 19.4 30.5 0.16 Total 400.3 392.7 30.2 9.9 62.5 0.48