AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT


Kyrgyzstan remains an agrarian country.  In 2020, an estimated 40% of the population is employed in agriculture, but farming accounts for some 20% of Gross Domestic Product.  Historically, livestock production has been the primary agricultural activity, dominated by pastoral grazing systems that take advantage of forage at different elevations and precipitation zones.  The Fergana Valley historically was known to produce the best horses due to the quality forage there.  Large irrigation systems were developed by the Soviets and enabled expansion of crop production in the various zones, including grains, vegetables, tree fruit, and cotton.  Most of this was under the state farm system, and conversion to private ownership/management proved to be an early challenge after independence.  See Kyrgyzstan Country Report from the U.S. Library of Congress, Federal Research Division.
A number of important tree fruits and nuts have their genetic center of origin in central Asia in the Tien Shan Mountains, which includes Kyrgyzstan.  For example, native apple forests exist and have been explored for their genetic diversity as well as a source of biocontrol organisms for apple pests in other parts of the world. Tree fruit production is common in the country, mostly small scale. Apple production in Issyk-Kul oblast has relied on exports to Russia for its markets, and the economics for growers have not been good.

In 2010, several members of our organization who are tree fruit orchardists visited Kyrgyzstan to see some of the fruit orchards there and to see whether they could provide any assistance to help redevelop the country's tree fruit industry, which had been in decline since independence in 1991.  They met with a well-known and influential Kyrgyz apple orchardist who owns 100 acres of land on which she has an apple orchard, and learned she also had a germplasm repository of local apples, a breeding program, and a nursery.  Through an interpreter, they shared knowledge of apple growing and production, and the organization's members brought her a series of publications by the Washington State Fruit Commission concerning fruit growing and production.

Here several photos from that trip:
That trip was the beginning of a series of exchanges of delegations between Issyk-Kul Province and Chelan County that five years later developed into the formal sister region relationship through a Memorandum of Understanding.

Since then, there have been exchanges of delegations between Kyrgyzstan and Washington State an average of 1-2 years apart, not only to share technical knowledge of mutual interest through professionals but also to develop and deepen cross-cultural understanding between Kyrgyzstan and the State of Washington.

On a trip to Kyrgyzstan in 2018, David Granatstein, a Sustainable Agriculture Specialist at Washington State University, further explored potential collaboration on tree fruit production.  He and the delegation met with the chairman of the Issyk-Kul EcoCluster, a type of biosphere reserve status for the region, to learn of their ideas on enhancing tree fruit production while protecting the region’s ecology.  They are looking at the potential to move to organic production of tree fruits, which should be feasible given the semi-arid climate.  Several key pests that are prevalent on apples and pears in central Washington did not appear to be causing much damage in Issyk-Kul, perhaps due to native biocontrol.  Granatstein visited a biocontrol facility in Karakol that was producing some organisms, and discussed related developments in Washington.  He also discussed control of fire blight, a disease of apple and pear native to North America that has found its way to central Asia via Europe and is now causing severe damage.  Washington has made significant progress in organic methods of fire blight control which could be of use to Kyrgyz orchardists.  In a related move in December 2018, the Kyrgyz Parliament ordered all agriculture to become organic within 10 years.  See https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/12/18/kyrgyzstan-parliament-orders-100-organic-agriculture-within-10-years/.

The delegation visited two different orchards.  In one, signs of fire blight were obvious, and several errors in orchard design were pointed out to the owner, who did not have access to this information and could have avoided the problem if he did.  That was also the situation at another orchard where the grower had invested considerable capital but would have been more successful with some key technical information.  Granatstein gave a presentation to the growers on organic fruit production and orchard management, based on his work in Washington.  He had hoped to visit a native apple forest to collect soils for analysis in Washington to compare the biology in orchard soils there to that in the native ecosystem, but the schedule did not allow for this. Opportunities for mutual benefit between Issyk-Kul and Washington related to tree fruit are considerable and efforts to realize them are being made.

Here are some photos from David Granatstein's trip:

To read more about that first trip of our organization's orchardist members in 2010, and the long-term relationship it helped engender, click here for an article by Geraldine Warner in the October 2015 issue of Good Fruit Grower magazine, Faraway Regions Form a Growing Relationship, the original of which can be found here.