SUGGESTIONS ON THE COMPILING THE SECTION "SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS"

For "General scheme for the development of the water system and irrigated agriculture till 2005" (1997 year).

Outline

Prior to planning the ways for scientific and technological progress in the irrigation of Uzbekistan, it is needed to generally describe the actual situation

One can say with no exaggeration that irrigation is vitally important in Uzbekistan economy. Major industries of the republic that have developed are directed to some extent to maintaining the irrigation constructions or cotton-growing. In the state of the art, when any subsidies from outside to agriculture are ceased, Uzbekistan must plan its economy heading for total payback of the agricultural production of irrigated lands. That is very a difficult problem since the experience in agricultural production of all the countries worldwide shows that agriculture needs government subsidies.

Of course, this problem is easily solved in highly industrialized countries; while in the case of a country which has only an agrarian sector, it faces the problem of looking for trade partners and exporting too big part of the agricultural product that have been produced. That is needed for purchasing from abroad necessary machinery, equipment, and materials by means of which the operational capability of irrigation systems can be maintained. You cannot imagine possible consequences in the result of stopping operation of even one big irrigation system in Uzbekistan. But it may happen. The fact is that the irrigation systems of Uzbekistan are too much power-consuming. Such unique cascades of pumping stations like Karshy or Amu-Bukhara ones not only consume very much amount of electric power, but also require systematic renewal of the quite expensive equipment. Calculations made in the world prices show that water delivery by the Karshi main canal costs about $ 900 US dollars per one hectare a year.

It is obvious no agricultural crop being grown, including cotton, can be such cost-effective. Without going into further economical computations, and returning to the irrigation problems, one can note that the main problem is searching every possible ways to reduce water supply for irrigation. In addition, that will allow lowering irrigation costs.

There is a broad sphere for action towards the reduction of water consumption, which can be confirmed by the following figures: throughout Uzbekistan, 13,800 m3/ha of water is taken for irrigation, while about 4,000 to 5,000 m3/ha is needed for growing crop of planned productivity. The latter number is a limit: it was taken in the result of drip irrigation of tilled crops (cotton-plant). The position that water supply is possible to be drastically decreased with causing no damage to the crop is corroborated by the recent achievements in the agricultural science. The point is that during the last 20 years, developed countries increased yielding amount of tilled crops twice as much and even more. This has been achieved, mainly, due to biotechnological methods of seed grain preparation. And also farming standards have increased, as well as the efficiency of using fertilizers and pesticides. As a rule, along with the impressive results of crop amounts, they look for the ways to reduce water consumption for irrigation.

The experience of the developed countries demonstrates that one must not associate increasing yield only with water supply to the fields. Furthermore, they have determined the limits of yielding admissible for different crops, when irrigation will be profitable. Those are very high figures: so, cotton (wool) should be yielded no less than 24 hundredweight per hectare; potato about 800 to 1000 hundredweight/ha; and vegetables (tomato) 800 hundredweight/ha. The crop amounts planned for the outlook over Uzbekistan does not reach even a half the figures mentioned above. It should be noticed that the figures of the crop amount are of the present time, and those are supposed to rise not in the distant future, but also in the nearest future. Our dissembling such low crop yielding from Uzbekistan's irrigated lands means dooming ourselves to chronic lag in this sphere.

One more condition should be mentioned: for quite long time, crop capacity in Uzbekistan and all over Central Asia was associated with water supply to the fields. During that period, great deal of projects was realized for increasing water supply to the lands. Cost-effectiveness of those projects was justified by rising yield. But expected yield increase did not take place; and now that the secret of the clandestine irrigated lands was revealed, or rather was legalized, one can even assert that cotton yielding has decreased for the last twenty years.

The considerations given concerning the analysis of the current situation allow formulating a fairly sacramental statement that further increase of yield and, consequently, croppage depend much more on the reconstruction of the branches outside of the irrigation system. And what is needed to be done to this effect should be determined by agrarian specialists.

Our firm belief is that one should not seek after discoveries here since the methods for raising the planting stock, using fertilizers, pesticides, etc. have been developed well in many countries. Irrigation specialists in cooperation with agrarian ones must solve the problems concerning possible reduction of water supply to irrigation using the most effective methods of cropping.

Another problem which is directly connected to water consumption is ecological matter. All the range of issues (frame) related to this problem has not been defined yet as till the recent times they took no notice of the ecological condition. One ought not to think that such a situation arose solely on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Many countries, including the United States of America, prefer to pretend that everything they have is OK, since removing some consequences of the human activity requires huge amount of money.
According to a definition of the Greenpeace organization:

"…solution of most ecological problems is unambiguously connected with the willingness of the country or a group of the contiguous countries to self-restriction".

This is a very explicit and universal statement. First of all, Greenpeace is emphasizing as well, "…it is necessary to act and communicate on objective information no matter how undesirable it is…". In our opinion, right here you can find the "stumbling block" which is able to be an obstacle in the way of solving the ecological problems in Uzbekistan. One can state with certainty that nowadays the ecological problems are abandoned being glossed with correspondingly assorted data. For example, none of the districts, regions or republics of the Central Asian region reported at least once of superfluous water withdrawal in their area. Any specialist possessing the data which is not so convenient to the superior body will try, at best, to use it nowhere.

That was happening for long time; therefore certain behavior and thinking patterns have been developed. Unfortunately, to the present day, there is an opinion that a good specialist, particularly a head of institution, even of research one, has to act as a politician, i.e. by the following scheme: I say one thing, but think another way, and do that what needed to be done. Needed to whom? It is clear it is needed to the superior institutions or bodies. As well as it promotes the preservation of the traditions and being kept without no change structural management forms and financing system.

Lately, it is accepted to speak about ecological problems, especially of the Aral Sea issue. Any problem, whatsoever, requires an explicit and quite exact formulating of the essence of the matter. Still, there is no such a formulating regarding the Aral Sea. In the title activity list of the construction works towards the solution of the Aral Sea problem for 1991, the following objects to be built were enumerated: hospitals, kindergartens, water pipes and running water, main roads, and so on. Execution of those works can solve the social and economic problems but the ecological ones. The tasks listed are evidently narrow-departmental tasks, which can be solved in convenient ways.

In other words, the economy management structure, being kept, in which inter-departmental bureaucratic political interests are dominant hinders from not only the solution of a problem, but also from formulating ecological problems. There are no discoveries here made.
The experience of a number of countries, including the former Soviet Union, displays convincingly that the solution of ecological problems is directly dependent on structural and legislative reorganizations in the country.

That experience shows as well that the solution of ecological problems takes form of a series of restrictions and prohibitions: use of energy and fuel for the industrial and agricultural production is strictly limited; punitive sanctions for damaging environment are introduced.

It is unlikely that any institution will work out a sanctions system which is directed against its activity.

Having emphasized once again that so that ecological problems to be solved a so-called unusual (unpopular) measures have to be taken, one can draw a conclusion that there is a need to establish research and technical groups. Such groups can develop conceptions and legal basics for the solution of the ecological problems. Financing of those independent groups' activities should be done by the government. At that, it is advisable to conduct contests for the presentation of corresponding programs and projects. Specialists from the foremost countries should be involved as experts.

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