Central Asia’s Over-Reliance on Cotton Fuels Potentially Dangerous Social Pressure -- Expert

Uzbek officials say prospects for the country's all-important cotton crop are bright in 2005. However, the author of an upcoming study on Central Asian agriculture contends that the reliance of Uzbekistan and its neighbors on cotton production has potentially destabilizing ramifications.

An official at Uzkholpkoprom, Uzbekistan's cotton monopoly, has predicted a 6.6 percent rise in cotton fiber exports in 2005 over the previous-year's total, the Prime-Tass news agency reported. Projections call for 3.6 million tons of raw cotton to be harvested this year, up slightly from 2004. Cotton-fiber exports are a critical source of revenue for the hard-pressed Uzbek economy, bringing in almost $900 million in 2003. Uzbekistan is the fifth largest cotton producer in the world.

Optimistic forecasts are obscuring underlying problems -- not only in Uzbekistan, but also in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. According to Michael Hall -- an analyst with Crisis Group (formerly called the International Crisis Group)-– Central Asia's agricultural sector is suffering from a dangerous dependence on cotton as a cash crop. Hall, who recently completed a study of Central Asia's cotton monoculture, indicated that structural problems are especially worrisome in Uzbekistan, where government officials seem more apt to either deny existing problems and abuses in the system, or are quicker to justify current practices as economically necessary.

The reliance of Central Asian governments on cotton production "necessitates a tight system of political and social control," Hall said during a February 8 presentation of his findings at the Open Society Institute in New York. Current practices are collectively a "much greater source of potential social trouble than the drugs trade, [as] it affects millions of people's lives directly," he said. Hall's Crisis Group report is expected to be published in the coming weeks.

According to Hall, all aspects of cotton production are subject to overbearing state control in Central Asian states. The end result is that farmers often labor under oppressive conditions for inadequate wages. "People who work in the cotton fields, who plant it and grow it, are not the ones who derive the benefit from it," Hall said. In Tajikistan, for example, "farmers who grow cotton are far more likely to be poor than those who grow potatoes, which is a bit of a paradox considering cotton is the number one cash crop."

Conditions are especially severe for women, Hall said. "Women do most of the work and reap much fewer of the benefits" than their male counterparts, he said. The post-Soviet economic collapse has forced a significant number of women into the region's agricultural sector, and officials have taken advantage of the labor glut to keep wages at a subsistence level. Women appear less likely to press local authorities and administrators to improve conditions, Hall added.

"The only reason many women work in the cotton fields at all is to be given the right to harvest the cotton stalks . . . [which] are one of the main sources for fuel in the winter months in rural communities," Hall said.

Troubles in the agricultural sector are exacerbating other social problems in Central Asia. For example, Hall said some women seeking to escape exploitation on cotton farms resort to more dangerous solutions, in particular prostitution. The increase in rural prostitution "opens up avenues for human trafficking and other forms of exploitation." Hall said.

In addition, current practices encourage Central Asian states to engage in human rights abuses, especially the use of forced labor. Hall said regional governments routinely flout legislation that bars children under 16 from working. "During the cotton harvest internal laws and international norms are quite regularly ignored." Hall said. "This affects children as young as second and third grade all the way up to adult employees."

In Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, tens of thousands of schoolchildren in rural areas spend time in the fields gathering the cotton crop, often working for little or no pay, and lacking sufficient food, water and shelter, Hall said. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive]. In some cases, the use of student labor has sparked violent protests by local farmers, who feel the practice limits their earning potential, Hall said.

Hall admitted that "there are no simple answers" when it comes to reforming Central Asia's agricultural sector. But, he added, Central Asian governments would take a major step in the right direction if they significantly scaled back their involvement in the sector.

"The governments need to get out of agriculture," he said. To encourage diversification, farmers should be given greater control over what crops to plant, and how much to charge for their produce. At the same time, he emphasized that "any reform [to reduce the dependence on cotton] needs to be part of a matrix of economic and political reform not solely directed toward agriculture."