What survival strategies have wheat farmers adopted? Will the nation recover its lost production or its export markets?
CIMMYT’s involvement in Central Asia and the Caucasus (CAC) deepened after the mid-1990s, when the Center initiated research directed at the region’s major wheat production systems and established a regional office in Kazakhstan. Experimental wheats poured through the channels opened by CIMMYT-Mexico, the International Winter Wheat Improvement Program,* and the CAC countries to reinvigorate wheat research (see “Waiting for a Better Wheat Variety in Uzbekistan”). In conducting research in the region, CIMMYT and its partners must be highly aware of the shifting realities of wheat farming and the political economy. Kazakhstan remains the principal wheat producer in CAC, and recent field visits have documented new wheat production systems and their characteristic challenges. From State Farm to Joint Stock Company Most of the huge state and collective farms that were the mainstay of agricultural production during the Soviet era were dismantled after 1991, and the people who lived and worked
