Programme Summary
The main goal of this initiative is to develop climate-smart planning for agricultural resources in Kyrgyzstan. This will help increase resilience against the effects of climate change and population growth while supporting vulnerable rural populations and helping agribusinesses improve farm performance.
The project aims to trigger a green transformation in farmland planning and use through a national evidence-based decision-support system. Specifically, a GIS monitoring system will be developed and made available to the private sector as a public good. This system will support decision-making regarding agricultural practices, increasing yields while reducing environmental impacts.
The land monitoring platform will be hosted and administered by the State Agency for Land Resources, Cadastre, Geodesy, and Cartography. It will be used by all public sector entities, primarily the Ministry of Agriculture, and agribusinesses sourcing raw materials locally. The platform will address the needs of the government and processors by monitoring the performance of the farming community, including productivity, crop rotation, and sustainable land use.
Additionally, the platform will be complemented by a free and open-source app for farmers. This app will be deployed by the Agency and financed by the Ministry of Digital Development of Kyrgyzstan.
Context
Considering the limited availability of agricultural land (54 percent of total land area), its efficient use is a prerequisite to sustain food security to the growing population of Kyrgyzstan: by 2050, +45 percent of food will be needed as population is expected to reach to 9.4 million[1].
The concept of the Digital Agriculture Development for 2022-2026 sets the ground for an innovative central land monitoring system. This system needs to be designed to facilitate evidence-based monitoring of agricultural land use efficiency, marking a significant stride towards modernizing agricultural practices.
[1] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). World Population Prospects 2022, Online Edition.
Activities
Building on the successful results of the EBRD’s pilot “GIS project – Phase 1” (2021-22), this assignment will expand the scope of the GIS Farmland Monitoring System from Chui Region only to the entire territory of Kyrgyzstan.
The FAO and its national partners will develop and deploy a GIS Farmland Monitoring System that will generate evidence-based data pertaining to the cropped land.
More specifically, the system will acquire information for a specific land plot and generate the calculation of its essential characteristics, such as:
- identification of sown crops (at least wheat, barley, corn, sugar beet, potato, soybean, alfalfa),
- sown areas under each crop,
- land use efficiency,
- potential productivity levels,
- agroecological shift forecast,
- application of crop rotation,
- agriculture water use efficiency (using FAO WaPOR tool at 100-meter resolution).
The system will become a significant enhancement to the land cadastre, allowing to capture and accumulate (generate historical data series) geospatial data related to agricultural land use.
