AKIPRESS.COM - Farmers who growing wheat on non-irrigated land in southern Uzbekistan expect to harvest no more than 6-7 cwt per hectare this season, which will cause financial losses, UzNews reports.

Farmers in Kashkadarya, Surkhandarya, Bukhara and Jizzakh regions grow grains, mostly wheat, on rain-fed lands but there is no water available for irrigation.

“It did not rain this April and we expect smaller harvests,” one of the local farmers noticed.

Agriculture reliant on rain rather than irrigation systems is less effective. Typical yields from a rain-fed field are about 15-17 cwt of wheat per hectare as opposed to 40-70 cwt from a field with an irrigation system.

According to the Uzbek Agriculture and Water Resources Ministry, around 1.5 million hectares of land in the country have been planted with grain, with wheat being the major crop, accounting for 1.4 million hectares.

Uzbekistan plans to harvest 7.0-7.2 million tons of grain this year.

Last year, the country’s grain-growers collected some 7.61 million tons of grain. Uzbekistan imports some additional wheat grain from the nearby Kazakhstan (737.4 thousand tons of grain last year).