The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, held a workshop to present the findings and recommendations from a prepared assessment report and policy recommendations related to land administration, land market development, and land reform in Uzbekistan. This event was part of the FAO project “Enhancing agricultural land market development to address land abandonment and improve land consolidation procedures” funded by the FAO-Türkiye Partnership Programme on Food and Agriculture (FTPP II).
The workshop brought together national and international experts who discussed the report findings and recommendations related to the security of land rights, land allocation to farmers land market development, and land reform. The objective of the FAO regional project is to support the introduction of a land banking instrument in connection with an ongoing land consolidation programme in Türkiye and a planned programme in Azerbaijan and assess the need for land market development and the feasibility of land management instruments in Uzbekistan. The project aims to support institutional capacity development on land tenure security, land allocation to farmers, and other land market development measures and instruments to ensure a more sustainable use of agricultural land.
The three project countries, Türkiye, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan, have different land tenure systems and land policies but share a common goal: to ensure the efficient and sustainable use of agricultural land. Morten Hartvigsen, FAO Land Tenure Officer, highlighted the importance of guaranteeing that farmers have secure tenure rights as this is a prerequisite for investments in farms as well as for sustainable use of the agricultural land. He also highlighted the importance of ensuring that smallholders, young farmers, and women farmers have access to agricultural land.
The project has also enabled the establishment of a well-functioning regional collaboration mechanism through knowledge exchange and capacity development between Türkiye and the two partner countries, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. Good regional land policy practices were disseminated and shared with a hundred participants from 30 countries at the regional LANDNET workshop in Istanbul in September 2023, where experts from Uzbekistan also participated.
Guzal Fayzieva, FAO National Communication Consultant
UzA