Assessment of efficiency and potentiality of agricultural resources in Central Asia

doi:10.1007/s11442-018-1528-3

Abstract

Abstract:

This paper quantitatively analyzes the utilization efficiency of agricultural resources in Central Asia by calculating the consumption coefficient of the main resources, including arable land, water and fertilizers. The results of these investigations reveal the following: (1) The average consumption coefficients of cultivated land resources in Central Asia are much higher than the world average value of up to 7.74 m²/kg, which is 3.6 times that of China, suggesting that the cultivated land resource consumption coefficient of cultivated land resource utilization efficiency is low in the Central Asian region. (2) Up to 80% of available water resources are used for agriculture irrigation. The average agricultural water consumption in Central Asia is about 9.43 m³/kg, or nearly 9.3 times the average value elsewhere in Asia, indicating that agricultural water use efficiency in this region is very low and water resources are wasted. (3) The fertilizer consumption coefficient in Central Asia is 0.035 kg/kg, which is close to the world average, but the utilization efficiency of fertilizer is relatively high. Therefore, in the future development of agriculture, Central Asia should pay more attention to the management of agricultural water resources in order to improve the utilization efficiency of these resources as well as that of arable land.

Key words: Central Asia, agricultural resources, consumption coefficient, use efficiency

Jiaoyou ZHANG, Yaning CHEN, Zhi LI. Assessment of efficiency and potentiality of agricultural resources in Central Asia[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2018, 28(9): 1329-1340.

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	Population			Arable land
Country	Total	Percentage of total population of Central Asia		Land area	Arable land area	Percentage of land area	Per person of arable land
	10⁶person		%	km²	km²	%	ha/person
KAZ	17.29	25.53		2699700	293950	10.89	1.700
KGZ	5.83	8.62		191800	12806	6.68	0.219
TJK	8.36	12.35		138786	7300	5.26	0.087
TKM	5.47	8.07		469930	19400	4.13	0.355
UZB	30.76	45.43		425400	44000	10.34	0.143
Central Asia	67.71		100	3925616	377456	9.62	0.538

	Industries		Municipalities		Agriculture
Country	Volume	Percentage of total	Volume	Percentage of total	Volume	Percentage of total
	10⁹ m3	%	10⁹ m3	%	10⁹ m3	%
KAZ	6.26	29.63	0.88	4.15	14.00	66.23
KGZ	0.34	4.20	0.22	2.80	7.45	93.01
TJK	0.41	3.55	0.65	5.63	10.44	90.86
TKM	0.84	3.00	0.75	2.70	26.36	94.31
UZB	1.50	2.68	4.10	7.32	50.40	90.00
Central Asia	9.35	7.50	6.60	5.30	108.65	87.21

Country	Total freshwater in country	Percentage of total freshwater in Central Asia	Water withdrawal by country	Water withdrawal of total freshwater	Water withdrawal to total withdrawal in Central Asia	Water withdrawal to total water resources in Central Asia
	10⁹m3	%	10⁹ m3	%	%	%
KAZ	64.35	33.09	21.14	32.85	16.97	10.87
KGZ	48.93	25.16	8.01	16.36	6.43	4.12
TJK	63.46	32.63	11.49	18.11	9.22	5.91
TKM	1.41	0.72	27.95	1989.32	22.43	14.37
UZB	16.34	8.40	56.00	342.72	44.95	28.79
Central Asia	194.49	100	124.59	64.06	100	64.06

Region	Water consumption coefficients (m3/kg)
Asia	1.014
Africa	0.684
North America	0.33
South America	0.331
Europe	0.225
Egypt	2.638
Japan	1.946
China	1.102
Western China	1.105
Central Asia	9.434

Country		Input		Output
	Arable land	Water	Fertilizer	Production
	(ha)	(m³)	(kg)	(kg)
KAZ	1	960.28	6.84	1172.89
KGZ	1	12502.43	49.57	2276.25
TJK	1	26459.25	156.24	3167.92
TKM	1	49111.46	*	2627.01
UZB	1	30857.77	592.16	4831.32
Central Asia	1	6124.33	65.28	1635.13