What a disappointment! I had lined it up nicely and was well prepared to meet an Uzbek cotton farmer. I was eagerly waiting for Nyioz, my ‘guide’ and ‘interpreter’, a young French student I had met the night before, who seemed excited about my project and keen to bring me to some cotton farmers he knew personally. But when Niyoz arrived, he told me that in the meantime he had learnt that if I wanted to write about cotton, I needed to get a special permission from the government and that we couldn’t conduct the planned interview. However, he promissed that he would help me meet a farmer who works with a less ‘strategic’ crop.
There you go! I am directly affected by the notorious lack of freedom of press in Uzbekistan! Since I definitely don’t want to put anyone (including myself!) in potential trouble, I will give up the interviews here and simply share some of the things I have learnt about cotton cultivation in Uzbekistan.
Cotton, nicknamed the ‘white gold’ in Uzbekistan, is the country’s main cash crop, accounting for 17% of its exports in 2006, with annual cotton production of about 1 mio. ton of fiber (6th largest producer) and exports of 700,000-800,000 tons (2nd largest exporter, mainly to China, Bangladesh, Korea and Russia.)
Cotton grown on Uzbekistan land was recorded nearly 2000 years ago. Production of cotton dramatically increased under Soviet Russian, when Uzbekistan basically produced nothing else but cotton. Because of the risks associated with a one-crop economy as well as from considerations of food security for the population, after independence Uzbekistan has been moving to diversify its production into cereals, while reducing cotton production (from 1.8 mio ha in 1990 to 1.4 mio. ha in 2006.)
Cotton production in Uzbekistan is controversial for mainly 2 reasons. First, for its impact of the environment. Cotton monoculture is the main reason for the drying out of the Aral Sea. Formerly one of the largest lakes in the world, the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects (principally for cotton). By 2007, it had declined to 10% of its original size and satellite images from 2014 revealed that the eastern basin of the Aral Sea had completely dried up. Read more about the Aral Sea ecological disaster.
The other reason why cotton farming is a touchy topic in Uzbekistan is because it had been associated with forced labor, including child labor. That’s the reason why many companies such as H&M, Ikea and Adidas have boycotted the use of Uzbekistani cotton in their products. Human rights reports were talking about appalling conditions in the cotton industry with children as young as 9 used for harvesting cotton and farmers forced to grow cotton without any benefits.
Apparently the situation has improved today. But the industry is still fully state-controlled and over 1 million public servants, employees of private businesses and young people are employed in the harvesting of cotton.
As I said, I haven’t had a chance to learn much about cotton cultivation from first hand in Uzbekistan. However, I did talk with Nioz, the 22 year old French student mentioned above about his experience of harvesting cotton. He said that he has been doing this yearly since he is 19 (the official minimal age for harvesting cotton) and that this has been a great experience. He actually thinks that most young people are like him and are already looking forward to September, when it’s cotton harvesting time. That’s when he will go to some cotton fields at the west of Samarkand, working and sleeping there for a month, together with hundreds of other young people like him (including girls!) There are about 100 people working on one field and it takes them about a week to finish off that field. In addition to human labor, machines are also being used in some fields. Nioz doesn’t think that the work is particularly hard; he can harvest up to 80kg per day. He is paid by the weight (200-300 Som/kg, ca. 0,05$). The main reasons why likes the work in the cotton fields are because of the great sense of conviviality amongst the young workers and also because it is a way for him to give back to the government what it has done for him.
Farmers on my Road 