No. 7 (50) February 2004

ICWC TRAINING CENTER SEMINAR “IRRIGATED FARMING DEVELOPMENT”

The Aral Sea basin has one of the largest irrigation systems in the world. Life standard of about 22 million people in the basin directly or indirectly depends on irrigated farming. 20 to 60% of GDP falls on the agriculture, the most part of which is output of the irrigated farming.

After the USSR’s collapse, agricultural incomes began to fall at a rapid pace, and irrigated farming development slowed down. Trying to improve the existing situation, the governments carried out reforms in both agricultural and water sectors. Aiming at providing food security, the agrarian reforms were effected at a fast pace. Most reforms in water sector were implemented much later than in agriculture. In both cases, they were carried out separately, whereas they had to be implemented after revealing the situation.

During the reforms in agrarian sector, a large number of water users — private farms, farmers with not very vast lands — replaced relatively large state farms. The appearance of such many farms made performing the task of water allocation and supply difficult.

During the Soviet era, the tasks of land reclamation, irrigation systems operation and maintenance were executed by the state services at the expense of the budget. After the transition of the countries in the region to the market economy, the need for changing the approach to solving these tasks appeared, because the most farms are private. Many former on-farm irrigation and collector-drainage canals and sewers with the division of farms into parts became inter-farm. Earlier, they were considered on-farm, the operation and maintenance were carried out at the expense of the farms themselves. Now, the operation and maintenance of on-farm collector-drainage and irrigation network should be done by the farms themselves through WUAs. Unfortunately, a lot of farms are not able to fully cover all the costs. Thereupon, governmental support and guidance are needed. The situation gets complicated by that the kinds of the cultivated crops change owing to the multiplicity of farms. This aggravates the irrigation regime and sets additional problems to water specialists. Settling these problems requires special approaches with applying advanced irrigation methods and technologies.

Changes in water and agricultural sectors for the recent years caused the need for holding a special training for water specialists, based on the latest scientific achievements, advanced irrigation practices tested in various projects. On the other hand, holding such a training seminar is induced by the necessity of disseminating the water and agrarian sectors’ experiences accumulated for the recent years. Water recourses deficit in the vegetation period and frequent rotation of high and low water years also stipulate a wide application of the advanced irrigation practices.

The seminar on “Irrigated farming development” was held from 9 to 13 February 2004. The training program stipulated the exchange of opinions on the issues, united within the frame of 6 modules:

• Overall issues of irrigated farming;
• Irrigation;
• Transfer of the water management authorities;
• Land reclamation and operation;
• Program packages for irrigation management.

First Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Head of Water Resources Central Board A.A. Djalalov and ICWC TC Director P.D. Umarov took part in the opening of the seminar.

The seminar program and themes of the papers were oriented to providing conditions for the experience exchange in regard to the foremost approaches to solving the irrigated farming issues between the experts and scientists at the top and middle levels of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The participants of the meeting were presented as the workers of reclamation services of water sector, workers of scientific-research institutes in the region.

Data and intelligence, obtained during the discussions, deepened the understanding of national peculiarities of WUAs creation, water tariffs development, hydrometrology and management structure.

It was noted that the lack of financial means is the main factor of the region’s irrigated lands status deterioration and causes a variety of interrelated problems, among of which there are:

- soil degradation, occurring rapidly year by year; if the matters stand further, then in the near future agricultural production in the lowlands will become an unprofitable activity;
- outage of drainage systems owing to untimely carrying out cleaning measures.

The audience noted the need for intensifying the action for strengthening in the minds of water users the ideas of efficient water use and wider and more consecutive application of the advanced water saving methods in irrigated farming. Moreover, the transfer of water management authorities to the public requires creating a basis for actions. The community, which receives the authorities, should be ready for this process. Consultation services are a mechanism well-proven abroad that can not only help this process, but also consult agricultural producers on many aspects, related to the principal activity: planning and selecting agricultural crops, business-planning and legal matters. Setting up consultation services at the local level will undoubtedly help to improve the existing situation in agriculture.

The training participants proposed a set of recommendations and offers for efficient development of irrigated farming in Central Asia. In particular, attention was focused on the need for developing the techniques of crop production in irrigated lands in the future. The main directions of this work should be:

• Certification of irrigated plots based on large-scale soil reclamation survey, fixing household use of a plot, its surface status, boundary conditions, and other factors, determining its productivity and possible capacities.
• Set of measures (for land reclamation and agrarian purposes), ensuring uniformity of irrigated plot as an object of agro-reclamation measures, expediency of which is determined by the certification. They include:
  • leveling the irrigated plot surface;
  • improving the top soil water-physical parameters (water permeability, moisture-retention capacity) by the available agro-reclamation measures;
  • creating and providing (by irrigation regime and drainage) salt content in root layer taking into account toxicity of salts and salt-resistance of the cultivated plants;
  • peculiarities of irrigation technology (irrigation frequency, defined by the required soil water-salt regime and scientifically grounded irrigation regime for certain agricultural crop) with refusal of a large difference in the limits of permissible moisture, and ensuring uniform moistening and permissible salinity (by using dispersed supply, furrow and strip shortening, at the most 100-200 m, and discrete water supply technology);
  • necessity and uniformity of drainage (in case of heavy soils, provision of temporary drainage within the limits of irrigated plot);
  • special measures for eliminating field spottiness according to its formation factors.

Many demonstration and experimental plots were abandoned due to the shortage or non-availability of financing. Taking into account that acquaintance of agricultural producers with the new scientific achievements in irrigation can help water conservation, there is a need for reanimating these plots activity. On the other hand, climate change demands adaptation of crops (drought- and salt-resistant sorts of crops) that can be achieved through experiments. From this point of view, the activity of experimental plots is one of available mechanisms in providing sustainable agricultural development. It is well known that the development of agriculture can serve as an instrument for overcoming the poverty.

Water is a limited resource, each drop of which must be used effectively. The share of groundwater in the region’s water intake amounts to 8-10%. About 50% of rural need for drinking water is met by groundwater. The participants stated that the development of agriculture should not pollute the sources of drinking water, located in rural areas. There is a need to create buffer zones to ensure the protection of the sources from the pollution.

The following measures, aiming at water resources reuse, were mentioned:

• using collector-drainage waters with permissible salinity according to the feasibility study;
• introducing subsidized prices for electric energy, used for groundwater abstraction.

The following measures, aiming at minimizing water losses in irrigation network, were mentioned:

• introducing intensive crop cultivation methods (deep loosening, application of chemical meliorants and organic fertilizers, deep ploughing and crop rotation);
• providing soil desalinization and uniform moistening and infiltration groundwater salinity reduction by optimizing the sizes of irrigated plots and leveling;
• reviewing crop selection in the context of ecological, economic and social conditions in the region;
• excluding strongly saline lands from crop rotation;
• organizing regular cleaning and maintenance of inter- and on-farm collectors and water recipients for avoiding further deterioration of the existing irrigated lands drainage technical status;
• working out necessary state support for drainage network and inter-farm collectors;
• training and improving the professional skill of the young specialists in irrigation and drainage systems.

The following measures are proposed to apply as economic instruments for water conservation:

• strengthening the status of regional organizations;
• gradually introducing the principles of basin hydrographic water management;
• increasing the governmental support and developing measures to stimulate technical maintenance of water objects;
• increasing the support of farmers in the form of subsidies to ensure their competitiveness in the world market;

It is worthy to pay attention to such organizational measures for efficient water use as:

• gradually toughening the limits at the level of countries, oblasts;
• mobilizing water users and creating public organs for controlling water use on the system, including all the levels — from basin level (public water committees such as organs for assistance to water organizations and control over their activities) to the level of systems management, rayvodkhozs;
• creating WUAs at the level of aggregated private farms (and in cities — public utilities). A singular problem of WUAs is participation in organizing of a strict water rotation and a limited water use;