Abstract:

Driven by constant domestic and international demand, over the past 10-15 years, soybean has evolved into the main cash crop in Kazakhstan’s borderlands with China. In comparison to formerly dominating crops in Eastern Almaty and Zhetysu regions like sugarbeet and maize, even smallholder soybean farmers due to competition among middlemen and other customers are in a much stronger position to negotiate wholesale prices for their harvest. Exploring the socio-economic and social-ecological outcomes of a decade of intensive soybean farming, the paper asks, if the shift to soybean can be considered a game-changer and a future opportunity for farmers in the area. Also the current and potential (rather secretive) transborder impact of Chinese actors ‘on the ground’ that is forged through infrastructural modernization in the framework of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) is scrutinized as a factor in the ongoing soybean boom. The contribution is based on several months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural communities in Southeastern Kazakhstan, with semi-structured interviews being the major source of knowledge generation. It aims to shed light on the changing power constellations and actor figurations in a regional-level farming system.

Abstract:

The monocultural specialisation of Central Asia in cotton (and irrigation) was already inherent in the first Soviet zoning plans (rayonirovanye), partly due to the previous colonisation of the region. In turn, Kazakhstan "received" its agrarian specialisation - monoculture wheat production - with the programme for developing "virgin lands" ("Tselina"). However, economic and political discussions about alternative models of industrial agricultural organisation/zoning in Soviet Central Asia have remained outside the scope of scholarly interest. At the same time, in the 1930s, numerous experiments with industrial crops such as soya beans, kenaf, sunflower, and flax, to mention but a few, were carried out in Almaty, Bishkek, Aktobe and even in Karlag. Plant breeders, including those repressed and exiled to Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, wrote scientific papers discussing alternatives to intra-republican zoning and organised and conducted crop trials on rainfed, reclaimed and irrigated plots. Finally, forcibly resettled ethnic groups were (not)involved in the mass production of particular crops (for example, Koreans cultivated staple for them rice but were not included in the production of another essential crop, soybeans).

Without understanding these processes, the modernisation and Sovietisation of Central Asian agriculture remain incomplete. Moreover, it is not well understood how the industrialised agriculture system laid down in the 1930s continues to influence current agrarian changes, local farming decisions and even the mentality of farmers.

In my paper, using archival data from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russian archives, I will examine attempts at soybean introduction in the region, the debates over the possibility of its industrial cultivation, and the long-term (almost a century) persistence of the agro-botanical soybean knowledge production system.

Abstract:

Large-scale modernization of animal husbandry in Kazakhstan started in the 1930s. It is usually associated with collectivization, sedentarization of people and animals and their concentration on collective and state farms. What also mattered for future development was the devastating famine of 1931-33 (when around 1,5 million people and 92% of animals perished). In response, the Kremlin wanted to restore Kazakhstan as “the largest base of animal husbandry in the east” of the country. To implement this colonialism-style idea, mass transportation of animals to the republic took place, though poorly organized from a veterinary perspective which subsequently led to epizootic of brucellosis.

Kazakh nomads traditionally had special techniques to deal with animal health problems . Based upon the use of archival sources from both Kazakhstan and Russia, we argue, that this folk veterinary was replaced by western veterinary and its sanitary norms, nomadic material culture highly dependent on animals was replaced by stationary farms, animals were alienated from people due to shift of property rights due to collectivization. Kazakhstan veterinary in 1930s and 1940s faced several issues: lack of veterinary staff and lack of qualification of available specialists, acute shortage of materials and tools for disinfection; in some cases disagreement between scholars about anti-epizootic policies. As a result of all those problems, epizootic and epidemic of brucellosis took place in Kazakhstan. The publications of brucellosis in Kazakhstan cover the period after 1953, not so much is known about the initial stage of infection spread.