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Kazakhstan proposes an SCO platform for water-saving farming at the Yangling fair

Kazakhstan’s vice-minister of agriculture, Nazgul Khatepova, proposed a regional platform for exchanging water-saving farming practice among the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s members at an SCO round table during the Yangling agricultural fair in Shaanxi. Her pitch was Kazakhstan’s own numbers: water-saving technology on 702,300 hectares, about 44 percent of irrigated land, and 874 million cubic metres of water saved in 2025.

By CAW Staff27 October 2026
Drip-irrigation lines running down rows of young crop in dry soil at dawn, a slate-blue header pipe with one amber valve in the foreground.

The platform would bring together state bodies, research institutes, agricultural universities, equipment makers and farmers from the SCO member states, the agriculture ministry’s press service said in the Russian text Kapital.kz carried on Monday. Its work would be joint research and field trials, the exchange of scientific results and training, with drip and sprinkler irrigation, precision farming and digital monitoring of soil moisture named as the first fields.

“We are convinced that pooling the scientific, technological and production potential of the SCO member states will speed up the introduction of effective solutions, raise agricultural productivity and ensure more rational use of water resources,” Khatepova said at the 33rd Yangling fair, in the Russian text of the ministry release. Cooperation, she added, should be aimed at results farmers themselves demand.

Kazakhstan farms 1.6 million hectares of irrigated land. Water-saving technologies cover 702,300 hectares, about 44 percent of the country’s 1.6 million hectares of irrigated land, and in 2025 modern irrigation systems saved about 874 million cubic metres of water, by the ministry’s count.

The state pays for the switch. Reimbursement of the cost of buying and installing water-saving systems has been raised from 60 to 80 percent, and the subsidy on the price of irrigation water for farms that use them from 50 to 85 percent.

Water-saving technologies cover 702,300 hectares, about 44 percent of the country’s 1.6 million hectares of irrigated land, and in 2025 modern irrigation systems saved about 874 million cubic metres of water, by the ministry’s count.

Investment subsidies for water-saving technology are budgeted at 214.6 billion tenge for 2026 to 2028. The target is 1.3 million hectares under water-saving technology by 2030, which the ministry expects to save up to 2.2 billion cubic metres of water a year, about two and a half times the 2025 saving.

Four of the five Central Asian states and China are members of the organisation the proposal went to. Turkmenistan is not.

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