Uzbekistan has favorable climatic conditions for the development of various types of industrial production, but it is still an agricultural country. Crop production in the country is based on irrigated agriculture. Existing irrigation techniques are far from perfect, the traditional practice of deep plowing and other existing agricultural technologies significantly reduce the fertility of the land and water use efficiency, the volume of which is decreasing every year.
Traditional agricultural technology practiced for centuries by man cease to be effective and often cause damage to natural resources. Far behind the times of the free development of virgin lands where deep tillage, use of mineral fertilizers and other farming techniques did not affect the quality of the harvest and did not give the whole essence of the negative impact of these techniques on the ground, as undeveloped land still had a reserve of strength and has sufficient reserves of fertility and able to resist the negative impact of human and technology.
Currently, land degradation is becoming noticeable scale. Cultivation of crop and food production for a growing population is becoming a valuable task.
Uzbekistan is located in the central part of the Eurasian continent, and its total area is 447.4 km2. The area of irrigated lands in the republic is 4.3 million hectares. According to experts the area of degraded lands in Uzbekistan is more than 50.7% of the irrigated lands of the republic, that is, more than 2.18 million hectares.
With the current situation threatening the land fund of Uzbekistan, the introduction of agricultural practices in innovative technologies capable of rational use of water, saving energy and preserving the fertility of the soil, is becoming essential.
One of the well-proven technology on the market of agro-innovation is the technology of laser leveling of land, in order to reduce water consumption, reduce the time for irrigation, producing uniform and friendly sprouting plants. The advantages of this innovative technology to the traditional layout of the land is to save 15-20% irrigation water and increase the overall efficiency of water use, as well as increasing yields by 5-7 centners.
The plan refers to a method of laser land leveling by laser installation using special equipment, when the difference of surface roughness of the field is ± 3 cm. The benefits of this innovative technology to the traditional layout of agricultural land are:
a) easy to use;
b) saving irrigation water up to 25%;
c) effective and uniform distribution of irrigation water on the surface of the field;
d) as a result of higher yields to 5-7 centners and land improvement.
Our program, starting the first project in 2009, is well advanced with the technology and other areas of Uzbekistan. After the first project in the Khorezm region where laser leveling was used for more than 200 hectares of land, the technology has also been applied in Karakalpakstan, further technology stepped in the Ferghana Valley, where in Namangan region where over 300 hectares of agricultural land was leveled and a few hundreds of hectares ready for layout. In Kashkadarya region only in 2014 an area of 226 hectares were leveled and 416 hectares are ready for layout. This technology has also been applied in the Samarkand region.
Equipment for laser land leveling purchased to date, and is purchased from foreign manufacturers, for example, in Switzerland, Pakistan, Germany and China. But this equipment can also be produced within the country. The implementation of this technology given by the GEF SGP in a few years will begin to take scale and an opportunity to start local production of equipment for laser land leveling and widespread technologies in the country. It is currently preparing a working version of the project application for the production of equipment in one of the machine-building enterprises of the country.
Here you can familiarize with the project document and budget of the proposed project (in Russian). Please read and give your comments:
