Based on the materials of the media tour organized by the State Committee for Nature Protection in conjunction with the Small Grants Program of the Global Environment Facility (PMGEF) in Uzbekistan and the International Public Fund for Ecology and Health "Ecosan".

Farmers need simple solutions

During this trip to Khorezm, sometimes the words from the bear song to Balu about simple requests, or the quote attributed to Rutherford that if a scientist cannot explain to an eight-year-old boy what he was doing, he was a charlatan periodically popped up in his head.

A farmer from the Gurlen region, Khorezm region, Karimbay Sabirov, talks about the experience of introducing laser land leveling technology in his fields and the results obtained. Karimbay Sabirov is one of the most successful farmers in the region. He is always open and ready for innovation.

Demonstrated agricultural technologies were so simple and understandable, sometimes to the point of primitiveness, that they caused bewildered skepticism. Indeed, today innovations are mostly associated with nano- and other high technologies. But the economic effect obtained from the implementation of these simple solutions was the best argument in support of them.

Cellophane channel

For example, far from new, but forgotten, the method of waterproofing using plastic wrap. In ordinary canals dug in the ground, losses due to filtration reach up to 60% - all this amount of water goes into the soil. Huge losses, especially when compared with the scale of reclamation networks. For your information, irrigation needs 92% of the total water consumption in Uzbekistan. Only in the Khorezm region there are about 17 thousand km. irrigation and drainage canals. Of course, the largest of them have concrete insulation. But the rest, and this is more than 90% of the region's canals, are laid in open ground and do not have an anti-filtration coating. As a result, the efficiency of the canals is very low and a large amount of water is lost during transportation from the water source to the field. Putting them all in concrete trays is a very expensive decision. Perhaps an alternative would be waterproofing with plastic wrap. The only enemy of polyethylene is ultraviolet light, which requires constant control over the sprinkling of the film with earth on the sides of the channel. Otherwise, the period of validity of such waterproofing is practically unlimited.

Within the framework of the PMGEF projects, the Urgench State University (USU) carried out works on waterproofing the sections of two canals with polyethylene. One of them, the Navruz-Yap canal, is 2.6 km long. The canal provides water to 400 hectares of irrigated land. This area is home to 2,500 people, there are several farms. The throughput of the canal is 1.5 - 2 m3 / sec, but due to infiltration, the water did not reach the irrigated fields in sufficient quantity.

On the canal "Navruz-yap"

After waterproofing 1 km. channel, filtration in this area decreased from 50% to 10-5%. For 6 months on the channel "Navruz-yap" 10 451 thousand were saved. m3 of water. This made it possible to significantly increase both the area and the quality of irrigation. If we lay the film along the entire length of the canal, then in addition to the normative 400 hectares of irrigated land served by the Navruz-Yap canal, the available water will be enough for another 522 hectares.

Also, after the work carried out, due to the rise in the level of the bottom and water, irrigation now occurs by gravity, without pumping water with pumps, as it was before. This made it possible to significantly reduce energy costs.

The total cost of waterproofing 1 km of the canal amounted to 32.2 million soums. At the same time, the total costs for the delivery of irrigation water decreased by 20.1 million soums, and the cost of electricity by 20.1 million soums. Plus income from additional harvest. The estimated payback is from one to two years. It seems that the benefits are obvious. But despite the seeming low budget, not everyone can afford to invest 32 million soums per kilometer of the channel. And, nevertheless, there are already farmers who intend to use this technology. They hope that this will allow them to ensure sufficient watering, especially in the face of increased scarcity in recent years.

Fundraising and cost-effectiveness of a laser

“The best indicator of the success of a project is when people start to buy and use the technologies being promoted on their own,” said the rector of the URGU Ruzimbay Eshchanov. Farmers come and see and want to use it on their farms. Technology goes to the people. "

So, for example, now it is happening with laser leveling (see "EO" No. 11_2012), and with biogas. The demo center for biogas technologies, created by the GEF SGP and the UNDP project "Support to Uzbekistan in the transition to the path of low-carbon development of the national economy", has already trained more than 250 farmers from various regions of the Republic.

Its economic efficiency is of great importance for the success of the project promotion. To conduct an economic analysis, you need specialists. And USU tries to retain such specialists. The NGO Khorezm Agro-Consultative Center KRASS employs USU graduates and teachers, most of whom have studied under international programs and have a PhD. KRASS has become for USU an effective tool not only for "keeping brains", but also for financing scientific and research works on the fundraising mechanism.

Oybek Egamberdiev - employee of NGO "KRASS" standing on a scraper demonstrates the principle of operation of a laser receiver (in the background of the frame - a laser emitter).

According to Aleksey Volkov, the National Coordinator of the GEF SGP in Uzbekistan, today the USU and the NGO "KRASS" have become a kind of "think tank" for the promotion of agricultural technologies not only on the scale of the Khorezm region, but also in Uzbekistan. And even more than that, for example, the agrarians of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan became interested in the experience of using the laser in arid farming.

Economic analysis of the use of laser land planning in the fields of a farm “A. Temur ”of the Urgench district of the Khorezm region showed that the cost of mechanization increased by 12.3%. On the other hand, due to the leveled surface of the field, labor costs for subsequent agrotechnical measures are reduced by 23.2%, water consumption for irrigation is reduced by 30%. At the same time, the yield of wheat grain per hectare increases by an average of 4 centners (10%), and the profit increases by 50.1%. Overall, the profitability of growing wheat in laser-graded fields could rise from 15.5% to 22.5%.

After the hands-on demonstration, participants ask questions and exchange views

Calculations on cotton also showed economic efficiency from the use of laser land leveling technology. Labor costs are reduced by 11.3%, for irrigation - by 20.8%, water consumption - by 20%. At the same time, the yield increases by an average of 2.5 centners per hectare, and the profit grows by 57.6%. In general, the profitability of growing cotton in laser-graded fields could increase from 10% to 15%.

Also, the economic effect was calculated at the level of the entire Khorezm region. (see table). The increase in yields will allow obtaining additional profit of more than 2.6 million US dollars excluding the invested funds and about 0.6 million US dollars after covering the investments. In the third year of laser land planning in the Khorezm region, the additional profit will already amount to 18.8 million US dollars, which will amount to 2% of the gross regional product. In addition to economic efficiency, the use of laser land planning will save a large amount of water at the level of the entire region - 293.2 million m3 or 7.3% of the total annual water consumption of the Khorezm region.

Accessibility is key

Many other cost-effective and simple solutions were demonstrated in Khorezm. This includes agroforestry, zero tillage, energy efficient greenhouses and much more. Inna Rudenko, a specialist at the NGO “KRASS”, a graduate and teacher of the URGU, believes that accessibility is a key sign of environmental technologies for their successful implementation in farms. In this respect, KRASS has even formed a number of principles. In their opinion, the proposed innovative technologies should:

• be simple;

• include elements of local knowledge;

• be inexpensive, using available resources;

• give results (economic benefit) in a short time;

• require minimum costs of social labor (so that farmers can individually apply these technologies);

• be environmentally acceptable (acceptable) and sustainable;

• fit into the socio-economic environment of local communities.

Adherence to simple and cost-effective solutions speaks, first of all, of the applied focus of the technology, the ability to find optimization options in the least costly ways. Perhaps this is largely the influence of the human personality, the human factor. An illustrative example in this regard is how USU provided cooling for the gym, in which 250 people took exams. Without air conditioners, with the help of a compressor and underground waters, which are cold in Khorezm, and even at the height of summer have a temperature of 150 C. The author of the solution is the rector of USU Ruzimbay Eshchanov.

“Such a truly economic approach is what I would like to see in everyone,” says Aleksey Volkov, National Coordinator of the GEF SGP in Uzbekistan. - It is natural for a person to save, to keep his own. We need to develop this. Use good greed, if you please. Receive more and spend less. Whatever. In the end, any savings translate into savings on natural resources. "

1Today, the volume of irrigation water consumed in the Khorezm region during the traditional cultivation of wheat is 277.7 million m3 (48,500 ha * 5,725 m3), and cotton - 1,050 million m3 (105,000 ha * 10,000 m3). With the use of laser planning technology, there will be only 194.5 million m3 of water for wheat and 840 million m3 for cotton.

This material was prepared and kindly provided for posting on our website by the editor-in-chief of the journal "Economic Review" - Tatyana Pronkina
You can familiarize yourself with this material in the journal "Economic Outlook" No. 4 (161) 2013, under the heading TRENDS Innovations
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