Relaxing Control Over The Cropping Structure: The Next Step For Land Reform In Uzbekistan

Omnipresent control of Uzbekistan government in agriculture undermines land tenure security among the farmers and as result leads to low productivity and low incentives for investment into the land. In its turn low productivity in cotton farms worries the Uzbek policy makers on whether giving more freedom to 'private' farms will adversely alter vital production of cotton. In this study we hypothesized on opportunity of enhancing land tenure security in today's Uzbekistan without altering government's demand for cotton. Specifically we showed that relaxing requirement over the land occupation under cotton while leaving only government demand for output will result in freeing significant percentage of land area and consequently enhancing land [property] rights. Indeed, our estimates suggest that depending on the soil quality and entrepreneurship skills of farmer, from 3% to 6% of farm lands can be potentially taken out off the cotton production and used for producing alternative crops.