BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct. 2
By Fakhri Vakilov – Trend:
Uzbekistan and Russia have reached a preliminary agreement on the allocation of agricultural land in Russia for the cultivation of a number of agricultural crops by Uzbek entrepreneurs with the subsequent export of the crop to Uzbekistan, Trend reports citing the Ministry of Agriculture of Uzbekistan.
This was discussed on October 1, during video talks between the Minister of Agriculture of Uzbekistan Jamshid Khodjaev with representatives of the Russian Ministry of Agriculture.
The main goal of the bilateral online meeting is to discuss issues of providing agricultural land in Russia to Uzbek enterprises for growing several types of crops.
In August 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture of Uzbekistan sent the Russian side a list of crops and preliminary calculations for the area required for their cultivation.
“At the current stage, we propose to launch this project on an area of 35,000 hectares to establish contacts and interaction mechanisms, as well as their practical development. Moreover, we plan to gradually expand these areas to 300,000 - 500,000 hectares in the coming years and to 1 million hectares in the future", Khodzhaev added.
Currently, Russia has about 8 - 13 million hectares of agricultural land, and 23 Russian regions have already expressed their interest in supporting this Uzbek-Russian project.
During the meeting, the parties discussed certain issues of land allocation, including the conditions for providing Uzbek partners with long-term leases of agricultural land.
The parties agreed to discuss specific mechanisms and terms for the implementation of the project during the visit of the Uzbek working group to Russia in October of this year.
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