Download PDF - Field Exchange - Emergency Nutrition Network

Field Article
Janice Setser, Tajikistan, 2003
Land Reform in Tajikistan
By Obie C. Porteous
kolkhoz/sovkhoz was a principal unit of social
organization in rural Tajikistan. Each family in
the area was given a house with an adjacent
household plot for growing food for household
consumption. In return, the family was expected
to work on the large farm.
Taking a break from cotton picking.
Figure 1: Map of Khatlon Oblast with
Five Selected Districts.
AAH Tajikistan 10/2003
Obie Porteous holds a B.A. in International
Studies and a B.A. in Biology from the
University of Chicago, USA. He has work
experience with the World Bank in
Washington DC and is currently working as
a freelance journalist writing articles on
agriculture and development economics in
West Africa.
This work in Tajikistan was made possible
by a grant from the University of Chicago
Human Rights Program.
Issue 14 of Field Exchange carried an article by
Frances Mason on Action Against Hunger's assessments
of the causes of nutritional vulnerability
amongst the population in Tajikistan, following cessation
of the civil war and signing of the peace accord in
1997. One of several factors identified in this analysis
was failure of the land reform programme. The article
below describes a further study by Action Against
Hunger on the land reform process which unpicks, in
more detail, the array of political, institutional and
cultural factors impeding progress. (Ed).
The implementation of effective land
reform has been one of the biggest challenges
faced by the Republic of Tajikistan
since its independence from the Soviet
Union in 1991. During the Soviet period, the
country's sparse agricultural land was organized
into state farms (sovkhozes) and collective farms
(kolkhozes). Both types of farm were large (typically
more than 1,000 hectares) and were kept
under the close supervision of the state, which
set production plans and received monthly
reports on their operations. Beyond its role as
economic entity and place of employment, the
Starting in 1996, as the country emerged from
its prolonged civil war, the government slowly
began to try to break up these large state and collective
farms into smaller, more efficient private
farms. A series of laws were passed that aimed to
reorganize the kolkhozes/sovkhozes (which by
this time had entered a state of profound financial
crisis) into “dehkan” (private) farms. To
date, kolkhozes/sovkhozes that are designated
for seed production, livestock breeding, and
research are to be kept under the control of the
state, but all others are scheduled to be converted
into dehkan farms by 2005.
Action Against Hunger (AAH) has been
implementing nutrition, health, water/sanitation,
and food security programs in Khatlon
oblast since 1999. Khatlon is the largest of the
four regions of Tajikistan in terms of population,
with approximately 2,280,700 people as of
January 2003. During the civil war, the region
experienced some of the fiercest fighting, and
much of its infrastructure was destroyed. AAH's
annual nutrition surveys persistently find high
rates of both acute and chronic malnutrition in
Khatlon.
An AAH study sought to assess the impact of
the land reforms at the local level in Khatlon. Five
representative districts in the oblast were selected:
Bokhtar, Kabodian, Kolkhozabad, Pyanj, and
Shaartuz (see Figure 1). These five districts are
home to 616,100 people, approximately 30% of
the population of Khatlon and 10% of the population
of Tajikistan. The goal was to select districts
that were at different stages of the land reform
process and that had implemented the land
reforms in a variety of ways.
AAH investigation
In the first phase of the study, the researcher
met with the district representative of the State
Land Committee and the chief of the district
hukumat (or the deputy chief responsible for
agriculture) to gather information on the
progress of the land reforms at the district level.
In the second phase of the study, the
researcher visited each of the 31 jamoats 1 in these
five districts. Meetings were first held with one of
the three ranking officials of the jamoat - the
chief, the deputy chief, and the administrator.
Following this meeting, if time permitted, interviews
were conducted with the chairmen,
accountants, and economists of the jamoat's
farms.
In the third phase of the study, 10 villages
were randomly selected in each of the five districts.
A team of AAH monitors used a household
questionnaire to interview 20 households in each
village. The questionnaire was designed to assess
the access to land of households, in addition to
their knowledge of the land reforms, the freedom
they have in managing their farms, the costs of
taxes and documentation, the levels of credit use,
etc. In addition, the monitors were given a list of
1
The jamoat is the smallest administrative unit of the post
-Soviet system. Each district had five to seven jamoats.
The 31 jamoats ranged in size from 6,940 people in three
villages (Obshoron jamoat, Shaartuz district) to 42,000
people in 27 villages (Zargar jamoat, Bokhtar district).
3