All started from a simple desire of one elderly person from a distant village in dry Djizzak province of Uzbekistan to plant a wood next to his house, near the road. He dreamed that people would stop in the shade of the trees, have piala1 of green tea and talk about what a good thought was to plant the trees in this extremely dry area to make people happy. This simple and understandable idea has eventually resulted in a mass movement across Uzbekistan to plant pistachio trees. The story below will tell you how this happened.
Bastamkul Saidkulov, the one who started it all
The name of the person is Bastamkul Saidkulov. He came to GEF Small Grants Programme office in Uzbekistan back in 2008 asking to help buying a few kilometers of pipes to bring water from a distant well to his area. We talked a lot explaining how GEF works, that GEF does not finance simple buying of pipes, etc, etc. We explained to him that this should be not just a mere desire to plant anything to make his dream come true, but that it should be something bringing good to the environment and people living in such severe dry conditions. Bastamkul could not understand how comes that an environmental programme did not want to buy pipes that would deliver water for planting trees. What can be more environmental than planting trees?! He did not back up trying to understand the GEF's rational. There had to be a way how to meet our mutual interests.
Experts helped to find a solution. The GEF SGP invited a couple of experts from Forest Research Institute to go to that area and see what can possibly be done. This was a turning point that later on translated into large scale intervention of the GEF SGP in forestry in arid zones of Uzbekistan.
Bastamkul lives in the area of typical arid foothills, with around 300 mm of precipitations. There are more than 400 000 ha of such lands across Uzbekistan - in 9 out of 12 provinces of the country. People in such areas are usually engaged in rain-fed agriculture, growing oilseed crops or wheat and livestock breeding. The productivity of these lands is very low. Severe overgrazing is a common and widespread problem that wipes out any chance for revegetation of any tree and most grass plants. No vegetation is the first driving factor for land degradation and destruction of productive lands and thus leads to loss of income by people.
Galina Chernova, who is also known in Uzbekistan as Miss Pistachio
The situation had to be looked at closely by experts. Luckily it turned out that forest people had a solution. There was a group of experts that had been working on pistachio trees ecology - a tree species, very resistant to droughts and dry conditions. The group is led by Galina Chernova who has dedicated more than 50 years of her life to pistachio culture. The group had made many efforts to distribute knowledge about this amazing tree across Uzbekistan but with little success. They suggested pistachio as a possible and probably the only solution for reforestation of these arid foothill zones. It seemed that promotion of this tree species and agroforestry as an approach could potentially become a good alternative to livestock grazing in those fragile arid landscapes.
The team of forestry experts together with Bastamkul and local community started to work on the project design. First, the project aimed to train as many local people living around Nuratau mountains ridge as possible to start cultivation of this tree species - the region has ideal climatic and soil conditions for pistachio. Then we thought about reasons why the pistachio cultivation did not get wide recognition among people before. People did not want to plant pistachio although the Central Asia with Uzbekistan was the birthplace of the species. Iran and Turkey are among world leaders in pistachio production whereas Uzbekistan has far better conditions for this tree. In those countries pistachio is called "green gold". The main turn-away was that people did not want to wait 5-7 years before the pistachio starts fructify. We decided to make an emphasis on promoting pistachio agroforestry as a business model for local people stressing its economic profitability.
The GEF SGP approved the project and the work started. All project trainings were practical, with participants from nearby villages doing some on-ground work - preparing seeds, preparing seedlings, planting, preparing slots, etc. We were happy to see that participants on already first training were steeling the seedlings in order to plant them on their land plots. At least 200 local people were trained directly during formal project trainings. All interested people received a very detailed manual on establishing a pistachio plantation with descriptions and photos published by the project. The project helped to establish more than 50 ha of pistachio plantations.
Then the project recruited economists who made a wonderful cost-benefit analysis of the practice. All possible expenses and proceeds were calculated for the first 18 years of the pistachio plantation establishment. It turned out that pistachio is 50 times more profitable than wheat production on these arid lands. Livestock grazing for the whole period accounts only for 4.5% of profit derived from pistachio cultivation. And this did not take into account that pistachio optimal fruiting starts in 20-25 years after planting and can last hundreds of years. Basically we intended to say that agroforestry is much more profitable than livestock grazing and if one invests in forestry, he/she will become a wealthy person for more years to come.
The information was published and widely distributed across provinces of Uzbekistan where there are suitable conditions for pistachio cultivation. The project's information was a great success. A wave of interest arose after the publication. Foresters received tons of calls from all across the country. The practice was included by a Central Asia regional UNDP project in WOCAT database as a best practice.
Establishing a pistachio plantation in arid foothills of Nuratau mountains. Spring 2009
The National Steering Committee of the GEF SGP decided to support similar initiatives on pistachio from other provinces so that people from other regions of Uzbekistan would get to know the practice better. Since then projects in two more provinces have been implemented. The information was distributed apart from formal trainings by a word of mouth. We could not control the monitoring of how many farmers started to use this practice, but we constantly heard that farmers in many provinces start this agroforestry business. Rough estimations show that hundred hectares of pistachio plantations have already been established. The Government of Djizzak province alone - the province where the first project was implemented - ruled to allocate 1000 ha for pistachio plantation in 2013.
The growing interest in pistachio created high demand for the planting materials and inoculative material. Forestry people could not meet this demand. From the very beginning the idea of the practice's distribution was based on the belief that all can be done by people themselves, by market mechanisms, without any requests for investments from the side of the Government. But after 1 year after the created wave of the interest to this practice, it became obvious that supply of the planting and inoculative material can not meet the demand. There was a need to sustain the interest and give additional trigger to development of this sector by supporting supply side.
Then forestry people came up with an idea to create a few so
Then forestry people came up with an idea to create a few socalled "points of growth" for pistachio across Uzbekistan. Plantations containing collections of highly productive pistachio varieties and are able to sustainably provide planting and inoculative materials to interested farmers as well as provide consultative services were meant to become "points of growth". By opinion of forestry people 4 or 5 points of growth must be established to satisfy the growing demand. The GEF SGP instantly supported strengthening one of such points of growth that is based on the only and main collection of pistachio varieties in Uzbekistan - Gal Aral collection. As a result of the project a basis for production of additional planting and inoculative materials was established. Right now there is an application to the GEF SGP to create another Point of Growth for Fergana Valley.
The GEF support has played the key and major role in creating a new sector in the forestry industry of Uzbekistan - pistachio plantations. Through a several interlinked SGP projects with total GEF funding of UZS0.00, we could raise a great interest among farmers across the whole Uzbekistan in establishing agroforestry practice that is far more environmentally sustainable than any other land use in fragile arid landscape. Plus the practice has a clear cut livelihood improving dimension. We see that with a little more support from the GEF SGP to establish necessary points of growth we can ensure that this sector will continue developing, bringing lots of benefits to environment and people of Uzbekistan.
1Piala - a traditional Uzbek cup for drinking tea
