Agricultural value chains activity in uzbekistan

 
Table 1: Total number of farms including women led in 2010. 
№
Provinces 
No of farms 
Including women 
led 
1 
Republic of Karakalpakstan 
3,354 
229 
2 
Andijan 
6,175 
152 
3 
Bukhara 
3,953 
91 
4 
Jizzakh 
4,735 
182 
5 
Kashkadarya 
7,139 
304 
6 
Navoiy 
1,801 
47 
7 
Namangan 
4,515 
94 
8 
Samarkand 
7,723 
224 
9 
Surhandarya 
4,951 
141 
10 
Syrdarya 
3,319 
98 
11 
Tashkent 
6,051 
139 
12 
Ferghana 
7,737 
180 
13 
Khorezm 
4,681 
829 
Total 
66,134 
2,710 
In one of the most densely populated provinces of Uzbekistan, Ferghana Province, where agriculture is 
noticeably intensified, dynamics of female farm owners (Figure 4) indicates that relative to the total 
number of farmers in 3 provinces (Ferghana, Andijan and Namangan) the share of female farm owners 
and managers was considerably low. There are several explanations to the reduction of female farmers 
in 2009 and 2010: 1) the consolidation of farms in 2009 through the farm optimization reform, 2) the 
traditional inheritance of land from parents to sons of the family, signifying that the land titles of female 
farm owners eventually could have been passed to sons. 
Figure 4: Number of women farmers in Andijan, Ferghana and Namangan (2000-2010). Source: Stulina 2015. 
Although, women are an important work force in the farming systems and represent a large portion of 
water users for agricultural production, women make up only a small minority of WUA members 
and water managing leaders.
Stulina (2015) analyzing the representation of women (as members, and 
therefore as independent farmers) in Water User Associations reports that land optimization has 

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significantly reduced the numbers of female farmers and therefore also the number of women 
represented in Water Users’ Associations (Table 2). This is confirmed by comparing observations within 
the same district of the Bukhara province where out of 30 farmers only 1woman farmer was left after 
several farm optimizations.
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Table 2: Representation of women in WUAs (%) source: Stulina (2015). 
However, relatively small number of women farmers does not imply that women without legal land rental 
rights do not participate actively in agriculture. Men usually take on management roles in value chain 
activities, whereby women tend to participate as employees or independent wage workers. In general 
women’s labour is widely used in the irrigated agricultural sector, especially for cultivating, harvesting 
and post harvesting activities, which are often tedious and low-paid manual types of works (ADB, 2005; 
Mansoor & Quillin, 2006). 
Early agricultural reforms in Uzbekistan targeted poverty alleviation of the rural population and thus, land 
allocation for households’ home farming increased significantly (Scientific Information Center 2011). 
Majority of women have access to land management mainly through kitchen gardens, therefore, the 
involvement of women in subsistence and small production farming within their household plots has 
gained significant importance for rural women. It has been reported that kitchen gardens contribute 
to more than 80% (Alimdjanova 2008) of agricultural production (excluding crops such as cotton, 
wheat, rice) and ensure households’ food security in the rural and urban areas (Mukhamedova & 
Wegerich, 
2014). According to production of vegetables and fruits by farm type, homestead or kitchen gardens have 
steadily increased their production since independence in parallel with other types of commercial farming 
(Figure 5 and 6). Although subsistence farming is the main target of households in their kitchen gardens 
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Interviews during the field visits to Bukhara (January 2016).

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it is very often combined with growing and selling the produce in local market (ADB 2014) or exporting 
the whole produce through local consolidators and agrofirms. 
Figure 5: Dynamics of vegetables produced by farm type in Uzbekistan during 1992-20013. 
Figure 6: Dynamics of fruits produced by farm type in Uzbekistan during 1992-2013. Source: stat.uz 
Gender inequities still exist in Uzbekistan and arise from gender disparities in access to factors of 
production, gendered labour markets, power imbalances or cultural norms that also affect their access 
to resources and participation to agricultural value chains and decision making processes. 

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