Socio-economic factors affecting smallholder farmer decision-making in times of crises in south-western Tajikistan

Vortrag

Teil der Sitzung

[FS-460] Crises, regionalisation and food (in-)security: Debating influencing factors and development pathways

Sitzungstermin

Freitag (22. September 2023), 09:00–10:30

Sitzungsraum

SH 2.105

Autor*innen

Aksana Zakirova (HNE Eberswalde)

Kurzbeschreibung

Indeed, global shocks or crises often negatively affect most vulnerable people in poor and developing countries. Although Tajikistan is considered an agrarian country, its agricultural lands represents only 7% of the whole country’s territory. Tajikistan lacks sufficient production resources and is dependent on external supplies and world prices for its agricultural inputs. Farmers have traditionally coped with past crises without changing their customary agricultural practices, but the exponential price increases and limited supply of agricultural inputs from other countries in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, border conflicts between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine have made smallholder farmers’ rethink their customary agricultural practices and adopt certain resilience strategies

Schlagwörter

Smallholder farmers, decision-making, crop selection, resilience strategies, Tajikistan.

Abstract

Since the Soviet period, cotton has been a monoculture cash crop in Tajikistan, but since the USSR’s collapse, and the myriad socioeconomic changes that have accompanied it, cotton has lost its dominance as a productive and profitable crop. In its place, Tajikistani smallholding farmers have turned to crops that address the immediate needs of the population in times of demographic increases and the economic crisis of the last four years, brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, Russo-Ukrainian War, and border clashes with Kyrgyzstan, which we term “disturbing factors.” Although these new food crops – such as peanuts, greenhouse vegetables, and fruits from intensive orchards – have not erased cotton entirely, they nonetheless represent some of the various resilience strategies that farmers are using to respond to their circumstances. In this paper, we will examine smallholder farmers’ decision-making, as informed by a variety of socioeconomic factors (age, land area, knowledge, etc.), and adopted resilience strategies through qualitative data obtained from 2019-2022 in semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and personal visits to agricultural fields in the Khatlon region of Tajikistan, as well as expert opinions from local agricultural institutions. The concept of resilience fundamentally describes the capacity of people and systems to adapt to emerging changes of various kinds and is thus particularly well-suited to our analysis of the myriad factors affecting Tajikistani smallholder farmers’ crop selection and resilience strategies. Despite local contingencies and variations, Tajikistani smallholder farmers have demonstrated a willingness to adapt to their immediate circumstances similar to those of their counterparts in other countries by carefully selecting their crops, incorporating innovative methods, seeking additional sources of income, and renting out their land to maximize efficiency. Our contribution to this broader discussion, however, centres on farmers’ own conceptions of the problem and their decision-making processes. Despite smallholding farmers’ similarities across the globe, we have attempted to return the local element to our discussion. We have focused on how factors unique to their locale push them to make decisions based on their historical past and values, even if their conditions are similar to those of the counterparts abroad. This paper will contribute to our broader understanding of the concept of resilience through a close look at the local experience of the Central Asian region.