The Uzbek government pulled out all the stops at a reception hosted by Uzbek Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the Hotel Intercontinental in Tashkent on March 24. President Islam Karimov received Gilani, calling Pakistan “an important partner.”

The result:  a struggling Pakistan agreed to take a delivery of 1 million bales of cotton — and without having to pay the standard 80 percent advance payment, centralasiaonline.com reported citing Pakistan’s The News International.

All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) Chairman Gohar Ejaz told The News that Pakistan had been unable to get cotton from its other foreign suppliers.

Pakistan lost as much as 15 percent of its own cotton crop last season due to heavy floods in which more than 1,000 people died. Supply lines were also blocked, making delivery uncertain.

Although Pakistan has not purchased cotton from Uzbekistan in 10 years, it is willing to do business with Uzbekistan now to save its own textile industry due to shortages. Islamabad has proved indifferent to the exploitation of children in Uzbekistan, although domestic media has covered the issue of Uzbekistan’s deplorable practices.

According to The Express Tribune, the ingredients for the impressive feast were brought in from Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarkand and took a day to prepare:

The seven-course menu included red caviar with butter, an assortment of cold meat cuts, a fish platter, a cheese platter, salads, pickled vegetables, mezzeh, mini fish shashlik served with perch fish and prawns, cream of spinach soup, special Uzbek plov and a croquant parfait with sliced seasonal fruits as dessert.

By contrast, the children coerced to work in the fields bringing in the harvest are fed “third-rate macaroni,” according to fergananews.com. A freelance journalist in Bukhara wrote an eyewitness report:

“We were mostly served pasta, often with flour worms, and suspicious soups,” one Bukhara student, who gave her name as Nargiza, said. “Many refused to eat it, because it was dangerous. Several people became ill.”

Families also usually have to pay out of their own meager earnings for food.

In 2011, Uzbekistan plans to reduce its cotton exports from 880,000 tons, shipped in 2010, down to 750,000 tons, in order to create new production facilties and increase its capacity to produce cotton fiber, which will increase by 100,000 tons to 370,000 tons, said Novy Vek.

Uzbekistan’s main cotton purchasers are Bangladesh, China, Russia and Turkey. Farmers harvested 3.2 million tons of raw cotton in 2010, 1.4 percent more than in 2009.

Uzbekistan increased its cotton fiber export in January 2011 by 27.5 percent, and its total foreign trade volume for January increased by 24.9 percent, to $1.4 billion, regnum.ru reported.

Photo: Timur Rasul-Zade, Fergana.ru

Fergana.ru reports on Tajikistan’s gradual decrease in acreage planted under cotton in favor of orchards:

According to the chief agronomist of the Sogd provincial department of agriculture, Abduvohid Yarmatov, this year 16 thousand hectares of cotton were eliminated:  71 thousand hectares were planted under cotton before, and only 55 thousand are currently.  The main reason for the gradual move away from cotton is the fact that it’s unprofitable…

Falling cotton yields only compound Tajikistan’s cotton farmers’ cycle of indebtedness, to the state and to private banks.  Overall farm indebtedness exceeds half a billion dollars, and while the government has decreed part of it should be written off, the country is not close to solving the crisis.

Meanwhile, the shift to fruit cultures has obvious benefits:

If one hectare of cotton can produce crops worth up to 700 dollars, which requires 800 dollars to produce, then one hectare of grape vines will produce a harvest of 100 tons, when a kilogram of grapes at the market costs between one and five dollars.  The cost to produce the grapes and cotton are also incomparable.  Apricots, too, are similar…

Thankfully, in Tajikistan either some farmers seem to have the capacity to make these decisions on their own, or the state or debtholders are willing to allow them to make this change.  If this were only true in Uzbekistan, perhaps farmers would live better, rural communities would be more prosperous, and children would avoid being dragooned as cotton-pickers?

Read the whole article (in Russian) here: http://www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6229