Uzbek Rice Farmers Face Water Shortages and Migrate

For Bakhodir Elmurodov, 58, rice farming is a family tradition. He spent his childhood in his native Khorezm region among the rice fields on the banks of the Amu Darya, helping his parents run the farm. For him, rice is not just an agricultural crop, but the meaning of life, to which several generations of his ancestors dedicated themselves.

On the first day of the 2024 harvest, three people are loading the harvested grain into the combine.

“This is my first harvest grown in another, ‘foreign’ field in the Syrdarya region, almost 1,000 kilometers from my native Khorezm. There is less water, and I was forced to leave my land, where I have grown rice all my life,” the farmer said.

Over the past five years, the shortage of water, the main resource for growing rice, has become catastrophic. Since 2000, less and less water has been flowing into the lower and middle reaches of the Amu Darya. According to various forecasts, the runoff will keep decreasing in the coming years.

The water offtake from the Amu Darya for irrigation is no longer enough to grow rice.

Before leaving for the north, Bakhodir looked at the drying fields and realized that if nothing changed, his native Khorezm region would soon cease to be suitable for rice growing.

Rice to the Bottom

Rice is one of the most important agricultural crops and the main components of the diet for the 37-million-strong Uzbekistan. The country even has a “plov (pilaf) index” - similar to the American “Big Mac index” or the Ukrainian “borscht index”.

These metrics are often used as unofficial ways of determining purchasing power parity, but the “plov index” data is officially published by the Statistics Committee.

As of February 2025, the price of one kilogram of the flagship dish ranged from 95,000 in the Syrdarya region to 104,000 soums in the capital Tashkent (approximately $ 7.34 - $ 8.11). Just in 2024, according to official data a serving of plov became 15.6% more expensive.

In addition to being the main protagonist in a plate of plov, rice is present in many other dishes of Uzbek cuisine: mastava, shavla, moshkichiri, and others. According to official statistics, the annual per capita rice consumption in Uzbekistan averages around 10 kilograms. Demand exceeds supply, and Tashkent is forced to import rice from other countries.

“In 2023, the harvest reached 355.6 million tons of rice, while in 2024 it amounted to 377 million tons,” the ministry of agriculture told Vlast.

Khorezm is one of the main rice-growing regions of Uzbekistan, traditionally producing around 40% of the country’s total harvest. Yet, years of drought and a shortage of water for irrigation have upended the life of local farmers.

Climate change is a core cause of water shortage in Central Asia. Higher temperatures and decreasing precipitation led to increased withdrawals from reservoirs, which causes river flow depletion. This is happening even despite the other consequence of climate change: The melting of glaciers, which provide only 25% of the total river flow in the region.

Inefficient irrigation technologies have turned the problem into a catastrophe. Uzbekistan wastes too much water, and not only in agriculture. In 2024, Uzbekistan was fourth in the world in terms of water consumption per capita.

Moving to Syrdarya

In April 2024, Elmurodov moved to the Syrdarya region. He rented 10 hectares of land and hired a team of four people to grow a new crop. There are no amenities for living here, so they built temporary housing right on the edge of the field. In the face of adversity, the farmer is determined.

“In Khorezm, there are more people and less land for cultivation, because there is little water left in the Amu Darya. In Syrdarya, it’s the opposite: there is water, but few workers. That’s why we are moving here,” Elmurodov said.

Conditions in this area are more suitable for growing rice, he argues, because the groundwater here is closer to the surface.

“Fill the furrow once and the water will not leak. In Khorezm, it quickly soaks into the soil. Here the water holds, so growing rice is very profitable,” the farmer said.

Each hectare produced five tons of rice, for a total of 50 tons. Elmurodov believes that with another successful year, he will be able to resettle his family, who are still in Khorezm. He now plans to lease another 20 hectares of land.

Farmer Farkhod Karabekov from the Syrdarya region also hopes to try his luck in rice growing. Until 2017, his farm grew cotton and grains, before turning to melons and vegetables. Karabekov exported some of his products as far as Europe. In 2024 he decided to start growing rice, sowing it on 57 hectares.

“We decided to plant rice because of food security – so that our people would have enough food – and also economic aspects: rice prices have been rising sharply in the last few years. There is a deficit on the market,” the farmer said.

According to him, the year was successful: thanks to abundant natural rainfall, the rice fields yielded a rich harvest, around eight tons per hectare of the most expensive variety on the market, laser.

“Our rice growers are farmers from Khorezm with many years of experience. We agreed to cooperate with them. In terms of yield, our indicators turned out to be even better than in Khorezm,” Karabekov said.

In his farm, Karabekov grows rice using a different technology: the field is divided into small plots for more efficient water use and crop rotation. Every year farmers change the crop for sowing, which improves land fertility.

“Rice is a very water-intensive crop. Rice growers use large amounts of water, especially given our hot and dry climate. In Syrdarya, rice requires about 15-20,000 cubic meters of water per hectare, while in Khorezm around 25,000,” Vadim Sokolov, from the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea, told Vlast.

Before moving to the Syrdarya region, Elmurodov hoped that over time the government would support rice growers facing water shortages.

Only in mid-February, the government of Uzbekistan adopted a resolution to support Khorezm rice growers, by which rice producers in the region will obtain a fuel reimbursement of up to 1 million soums ($80) under certain conditions.

For 2025–2026, the state budget will also allocate subsidies to cover 20% of the cost of modern rice seeders and intensive sowing equipment.

Costs for rice production include seeds, fertilizers, mechanization, and labor. For many farmers, these costs are too high, and they cannot do without financial assistance from the state.

Preferential loans, together with fuel and fertilizer subsidies, help reduce costs and maintain competitiveness. The government regulates rice prices and purchases a fixed quota to ensure food security and stability in the domestic market.

According to Sokolov, one of the main problems of agriculture in Uzbekistan is soil salinity. Salt reduces the productivity of the soil. In order to grow something, farmers must wash salt out of the soil in the fall and winter. But this requires up to 4,000 cubic meters of water per hectare.

“New biotechnologies have emerged. Special bio-substances that ‘eat up’ salt can be used when washing the soil and when watering,” Sokolov said.

Karabekov’s farm also uses recycled water or drainage and waste water. Before using waste water from rice fields for repeated irrigation, it is necessary to study its chemical composition. To do this, the farmer had to invest almost 500 million soums ($40,000) in new technologies.

Karabekov is happy with the result.

“The groundwater is shallow. We have been using recycled water for four years now. There has been no damage to the land. The salinity level is low and the yield is good.”

In recent years, Uzbekistan has begun to actively introduce water-saving technologies in irrigation, as well as grow drought-resistant varieties of crops, including rice.

“We are still in the top ten most wasteful countries in the world in terms of water use, but progress has already been made. On average, over the past four years (2021-2024), we have used 8.6 billion cubic meters less water than over the previous ten years (2011-2020),” Sokolov said.

When people talk about Uzbek labor migrants, the first thing that comes to mind is people leaving to work in Russia, Kazakhstan, or other countries.

But Uzbekistan is also experiencing internal migration: in most countries this takes the form of resettlement from small towns to regional centers and the capital.

In the last year, internal migrants have a new kind of profile. They are no longer representatives of a cheap and disposable labor force without qualifications, but farmers with experience, leaving the banks of the ever shallower Amu Darya.

Those who want to continue working with rice are forced to move to Syrdarya, the only region where this is still possible despite the climate crisis. But will the current scale of government support be enough for farmers and is there enough land and water in the Syrdarya region to meet the needs of all farmers?