Since 2006, food security has become a major preoccupation for the states of Central Asia. The situation is particularly bad in Tajikistan, but cases of malnutrition are also multiplying in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. In this context, the Kazakhstani cereals market, in constant development, has acquired a strategic character for the whole region, which is largely dependent on exports from Astana. Kazakhstan hence continues to be torn between two goals: achieving greater returns on world markets and diversifying its export incomes away from hydrocarbons, and using its cereal production to pacify and stabilize its neighborhood.

BACKGROUND: With 20 percent of the Soviet Union’s arable land, Kazakhstan was always one of the motors of the Soviet cereals market. Even if the famous virgin lands campaign launched at the end of the 1950s by Nikita Khrushchev resulted in failure, cereals still accounted for a third of the Republic’s GDP upon independence. According to the official figures of the Ministry of Agriculture, the country has 222 million hectares of agricultural lands, principally in the country’s North and East. The majority (85 percent) is used as pasture lands and 10 percent as ploughed lands. Two-thirds of these agricultural lands are used for cereals and one-third for fodder crops.

Although cotton production is reported to have nearly tripled between 1998 and 2003, the country continues above all to be an exporter of cereals. Kazakhstan is seeking to become one of the world’s largest “breadbaskets” and has been continuously increasing its rates of production. In 2004, production levels stood at 9 million tons and reached 19 million tons in 2007, an increase of 22 percent as compared with 2006. The statistics from 2008 showed a slight decrease, with production dropping to 17 million tons. While Kazakhstan was only the 14th largest world exporter in 2006, today it ranks as the world’s 6th largest producer of cereals and hopes to become the 5th largest in the next two or three years.

To improve productivity and diversify the national economy, which is too dependent on hydrocarbons, the Kazakhstani authorities in 2000 set up a support system for cereal producers: for example, subsidies are available to assist farmers for input materials and the purchase of equipment, and for raising quality standards to comply with international and European norms in order to increase export capacity. With the privatization of the agricultural sector, today there are more than 100,000 farms managing the market, often of immense surface areas. The country’s continental climate constrains it to extensive agriculture, which provides yields considerably inferior to those of many western regions. As such, its 2007 record of 1.3 tons of cereal per hectare remains less than half that of Canada (2.7 tons of cereals per hectare). However, thanks to its dry climate, the country can grow many varieties of wheat in combination, durum wheat as much as bread wheat. Kazakhstani wheat is considered as being of superior quality, and is therefore easily exported, even during periods of crisis.

Kazakhstan’s export capacities are thus destined to increase. In 2008, the country exported close to 6 million tons of wheat. However, its main clients, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Iran are rather poor countries and therefore often not very solvent. Hence the importance for Astana of attaining the European certification norms for cereal products so that it can target more profitable markets and ensure guaranteed payments. However, the financial issue is not the only stake of Kazakh cereal exports; there are geopolitical stakes that relate to the fact that the southern republics are largely dependent on it.

IMPLICATIONS: The four other states of Central Asia find themselves in more complex situations. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan refuse to prioritize their food self-sufficiency, even if their official discourses endorse the contrary, and continue to privilege cotton as one of the state budget’s principal resources of foreign currency. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are continuously increasing the surface of their arable land—particularly reduced given the altitude of the two countries—for cotton but also for vegetables. The local economies are therefore not self-sufficient when it comes to cereals. Tajikistan, for example, needs 1.2 million tons of cereal per year, and, in the best of cases, produces slightly more than half. The country is thus almost certain to remain largely dependent on humanitarian aid and Kazakhstani cereal imports.

Uzbekistan, with a production of 5 million tons per year, is supposed to be self-sufficient and even exports part of its production (it ranks as the world’s 20^th largest exporter). However, wheat shortfalls have become more frequent in recent years, especially in 2008 when Tashkent announced a moratorium on exports to combat the rise of food prices in the country. If these measures each time aim at protecting the national market, they also contribute to the upsurge of prices. The price of bread, for example, skyrocketed throughout Uzbekistan and there was a shortage of flour in Khorezm and Karakalpakstan. The trafficking of wheat across the Uzbek-Kazakh border has taken on tremendous proportions. On the Kazakhstani side, the districts of Dostyk and of Zhartyboe in the Saryagash region are known for their trafficking of flour towards the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.

The upsurge of the prices of oil and cereals at the beginning of 2008 affected Tajikistan even more than its neighbors. In all the Central Asian states, although the base prices fell at the end of 2008, they remained just as high in Central Asia, a sign that the region is still artificially integrated into the fluctuations of the world market because the prices there have not fallen. The UN’s food program declared that, for 2009, 2.2 million Tajik citizens (out of a total of less than 7 million) are in a situation of food insecurity, including 34 percent of the rural population and 37 percent of the urban population, and that 800,000 persons are directly threatened by famine. The most affected Tajik regions are the traditionally poor ones (the regions of Khatlon in the South and Pamir) but also, and paradoxically, that of Sogd in the North, including the regional capital of Khodjent, historically one of the country’s richest regions. In Kyrgyzstan, the number of persons subject to food insecurity is reported to be one million. In Turkmenistan, no reliable figures are available, but local observers report numerous cases of malnutrition in some remote provinces of the country.

CONCLUSIONS: During the World Cereal Forum in Saint Petersburg on June 6-7 2009, the Russian Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Alexander Petrikov, maintained that Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan could together control up to 25 percent of the world cereal market. If Astana desires, as is its right, to target western and Middle-Eastern markets, its Central Asian neighbors will still depend on its exports for some time to come. Kazakhstan is therefore destined to play a key role, in the years to come, in the food stabilization of the other Central Asian states.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Sebastien Peyrouse is a Senior Research Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center (Washington/Stockholm). He is the co-author of China as a Neighbor: Central Asian Perspectives and Strategies (Silk Road Monograph, April 2009) and the author, co-author or editor of seven books on Central Asia in French.