Julia Eckert, Georg Elwert (1996):
Land Tenure in Uzbekistan

3.2 Rents for land and tools

Rent has to be paid for the different form of leases as well as for the usage of technology and services. The prices of these vary from kolkhoz to kolkhoz. We could not determine who sets the prices and whether the Hokhimiat also has a say in what has to be paid and at what price.

As mentioned above, the rent for the lease of land is estimated according to the potential yield calculated on the basis of scientific research. In some cases old five year plan targets were used to determine the amount to be paid as rent. Those projected yields might differ quite significantly from actual yields. [FN 102]

The rent is usually paid in produce. The amount of produce equivalent to the rent is calculated on the basis of fixed state prices not at market prices. Shirkat farmers have to sell a certain amount of produce to the kolkhozes at a fixed price which the kolkhoz pays in advance by paying a monthly wage to the farmers. The amount of produce which is given to the kolkhoz for the wage and the amount which is given as rent for the lease are usually not distinguished. This leads to a confusion on the side of the tenants about the various costs of the tenancy.

The rent for machinery is apparently set arbitrarily. Service points were supposed to be opened by every kolkhoz, but few have started operating. Machinery is rented mainly directly from the kolkhozes. In 42 % of the cases of Dehkhan farmers renting machinery the rent was paid in produce. In the Shirkat system rentals were often subtracted from the monthly wage of the Shirkat farmers. This, too, confused the farmers as to what they had to pay for what and what precise costs they had to calculate.

There are private rentals of machinery and transport. The price for plowing 25 are was 1200 sum, four times the monthly wage of most agricultural workers.

The problem is the lack of adapted technology. Especially processing technology is inadequate. [FN 103] The old Soviet machinery is designed for industrial type farming and therefore too big for the private farms. However, the private farms are too big for manual cultivation. The farmers said they cannot afford to buy new technology. Within Uzbekistan, only the big machinery is produced and foreign makes would have to be paid for in hard currency.

Since the technology available forces the farmers to practice collective cultivation their independent status is in reality reduced. Shirkat systems function similarly as the shareholding systems in many cases, since work is practically organised in brigades due to technological impasses. Farmers become dependent on the directives of the kolkhoz as to what crop they are supposed to plant, since if they plant another crop than their field neighbour they will not be able to use the technology to work the land. The size of the agricultural technology inhibits the planting of diversified crops on smaller fields.