Farmer innovation and self-help group (ทาจิกิสถาน)

An innovative land user, assisted by a self-help group has overcome many administrative and technical problems to establish a fruit garden on previously degraded communal grazing land.

Aims / objectives: Although in the 1980s the soviet government supported the establishment of private gardens in specified areas, the lack of irrigation water and suitable land often restricted this process. That was the case for Khagatai village, situated on the narrow valley floor of the Varzob River, below steep loess slopes. This marginal area is used for grazing and shows severe signs of water erosion; the hillsides are considered to be of little agricultural value. In the early 1980s, widespread unemployment evidently had the effect of stimulating people to use their own initiative. In 1982, one innovative farmer started to fence-off an area of half a hectare to establish a private fruit garden on the degraded grazing land. Some say that the fencing of plots for private fruit and hay production is a traditional practice - abandoned after the 1950s - but taken up again recently to re-establish rights to individual plots. The practice is widespread in the higher villages of Varzob, where the farmer noted it and decided to set up his own plot. When it came to practical implementation, despite the land user having five sons, the labour-intensive terracing was only completed thanks to the voluntary assistance of relatives and friends, a tradition locally known as 'hashar'. At first, when his initiative began to take shape on land officially owned by a state farm, no action was taken. However, the change in land management quickly showed positive productive results, and it may have been through jealousy that the people of Khagatai village then reported the case to the authorities. The watering of the garden on the unstable loess slope in the immediate vicinity of the village, and the consequent risk of landslides, was put forward as the reason for the complaint. The authorities opened an investigation and a number of newspaper articles were written about the case.

Methods: Since independent decision making was not common in the soviet states, and rapid degradation of newly irrigated lands on the loess deposits was a big issue, the case of this fruit garden attracted a lot of attention. However, when they observed the improved state of the vegetation on the plot, the authorities finally allowed the farmer to continue. In 1993 the prohibition on private cultivation of land was lifted in order to reduce problems of food shortage caused during the civil war that followed independence. It was during this time that four other land users from Khagatai village spontaneously began to imitate this practice.