Comparative Research Design - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 77

migrated to Russia. In almost every extended family one member works abroad or in Du
shanbe.
The prevalence of collective DFs is not the only hindrance to effective land reform.
Another major factor is that the state's prescriptions for production have not been abolished
yet. This affects cotton in particular as it secures benefits for the state and the networks of the
cotton business. 87 A yearly production plan is distributed to the oblasts and raions . In cotton
regions on average 70 80% of the land has to be used for cotton cultivation. The farmer is only
free to decide what to grow on the remaining area (AAH 2003: 9 11). 88 Besides those instruc
tions, there are a number of informal pressures to grow cotton: Access to key resources like
water, seeds, fertilizers, or loans is often dependent on whether the farmers cultivate cotton
(Jones Luong 2003: 28) 89 . For tobacco, production quotas still exist as well, as was the case in
the case study area: According to the raion representative of the State Land Committee, every
farmer is free to choose what to grow on 70% of his land. A state monopoly exists on the
remaining 30% of the land, on which tobacco is grown. 90 The (officially independent) collec
tive DF receives directives of how much and what to grow from the district khukumat and is
controlled by the jamoat . 91 In addition, households grow wheat and vegetables on their garden
plots ( ogorod ) mainly for subsistence.
The state cotton quotas are in part responsible for the high indebtedness of many far
mers, which often leads to financial dependency. New DFs inherited the debts of their preced
ing FSKs, most of which owed the state payments for water, electricity etc. According to IMF
estimations, altogether the FSKs owed about 125 Mio USD to the Tajik government at the
time of reorganization. These debts were divided among the new farms according to their size.
Consequently, most farms have debts ranging from several hundred to more than 1,000 USD
per ha. The indebted farms located in the cotton areas are now obliged to cultivate cotton on
state demand, while having to buy all of the necessary inputs themselves. This causes most
farmers to be dependent on local investors, so called 'futures companies' (' fyuchersnye '), that
provide pre finance for cotton production. The local investors on their part are contractors of
the Swiss company Paul Reinhart AG, which controls 95% of all Tajik cotton exports. At the
beginning of the agricultural year they provide seeds, fertilizer, fuel, salaries and other inputs
on a loan basis. The credit has to be paid back with the cotton harvest. As the value of the
harvest is often less than the value of the input (due to bad harvests and overprized inputs),
farmers run into debt with the investors and are obliged to continue working with them the
next year and a vicious circle starts. The practice of the local investors, which each hold a mo
nopoly on a certain region, is the object of frequent complaints by farmers concerning over
prized inputs, bad seed and fertilizer quality, late payments and deliveries. In 2000, cotton
farmers owed 100 Mio USD to investors (GoT 2002: 25; AAH 2003: 12 15; UNDP 2003: 37
42; ICG 2005: 8 10).
The fyuchersnye are the ones that profit most from the cotton production and that have be
nefited the most from land reform by establishing lucrative patronage networks; for farmers,
dependency relations remained more or less the same. The Government of Tajikistan in the
PRSP also acknowledged that the persisting informal production prescriptions, the complex
87 Cotton produces about 11% of all export incomes.
88 As a voluntary incentive, the land tax is reduced by 50% for cotton-cultivated fields (author's interview with a
representative of the State Land Committee, Aini, 10/01/2005). Such an incentive is not enough for farmers to grow
cotton, as cotton generally brings fewer gains for the farmers than other crops (UNDP 2003: 39f).
89 Author's interview with a NGO representative, Khudjand, 09/03/2004.
90 Author's interview with a representative of the State Land Committee, Aini, 10/01/2005.
91 Author's interview with the head of the mahalla committee, Iskodar, 09/30/2005.