The Asht district is gradually moving away from hand-picking cotton. Modern combines are replacing hundreds of pickers. One of the district’s large farms is already counting its savings and preparing to switch entirely to mechanized harvesting. But buying a machine is not enough — the whole approach to growing cotton has to change as well.
Sand, salt and cotton
“Come tomorrow at ten in the morning. The combines don’t go out early — the fields are damp. The morning dew on the cotton needs to dry first,” Zarif Mirdado, First Deputy Chairman of the Asht district, explains to me over the phone.
The meeting point is the roundabout in the village of Bulok, a landmark for Asht residents. Zarif Mirdado kindly agrees to accompany me and introduces me to Shokirjon Kurbonov, chairman of the Oshoba jamoat, one of the district’s largest cotton-growing jamoats.
“We’ll show you our local farm, Rahshona. It’s one of the biggest ones here,” says Kurbonov.
We drive along a dusty road. I take in the landscape: reeds spreading on both sides of the road, empty land stretching out all around.
At one point the terrain changes abruptly and we seem to find ourselves in a desert. The sand has formed unusual hills, giving the area a striking appearance. “
“This is a wind zone. Strong winds drive the sand, which gradually settles on the hills and forms this interesting landscape,” Zarif Mirdado explains.
The Asht district has a distinctive feature — difficult soil conditions. Salt deposits lying beneath the surface cause severe soil salinization. The whitish crust on the ground is one reminder of how hard farming is here. High salt concentrations make it difficult for plant roots to absorb water and can damage young seedlings.
Along the edges of some fields, earthen embankments are visible. As Zarif Mirdado explains, land reclamation for agriculture began here back in the Soviet era, using deep plowing. This loosens compacted soil layers so that water can penetrate deeper and flush out accumulated salts. After the Soviet Union collapsed, however, large-scale land reclamation work came to a halt.
“For cotton growers, soil salinity means additional risks,” Mirdado says. “Before sowing, the land has to be pre-irrigated so the salts sink into the lower soil layers. It’s very important for the young plants to grow strong before the salt rises to the surface again. If it rains during that period, the seedlings can die. In that case, farmers have to re-sow the plots, planting seeds all over again — and that means extra costs and lost time.”
One combine instead of hundreds of pickers
We pull up to the fields. I’ve been to cotton plantations many times and out of habit expect to see pickers with bags. This time, though, the scene is completely different.
The center of attention is a brand-new green combine. It moves steadily along the rows, drawing in cotton through a vacuum mechanism.
Here, too, it matters that the cotton is dry — damp fibers are harder to harvest. That’s why farmers try to bring in the crop before the rains arrive.
Only a handful of workers are on the field. They watch as the machine unloads the harvested raw cotton into trailers. As soon as the trailers fill with white “gold,” they are hitched to a tractor and driven to the warehouse.
We are met by Samidjon Pulatov, Deputy Director of the Rahshona farm. He explains that cotton harvesting used to depend entirely on manual labor.
“During a season that usually lasts three to three and a half months, we brought in up to 700–800 pickers. The main difficulty was that there were never enough hands. On Sundays we had to bring in employees from government institutions,” Pulatov says.
Switching to combines has changed both the speed of harvesting and the farm’s costs. According to the specialist, hand-picking one hectare of cotton requires 10–12 people. A combine, on the other hand, can cover 10–15 hectares in a day — a volume of work that would take roughly 200 people to do by hand.
The farm’s director, Davron Okhundjonov, joins our conversation and provides more detailed figures.
“ “Just for hand-picking cotton from ten hectares, the farm would spend around 20,000 somoni. On top of that come the costs of transporting pickers to the fields, since the fields here are far from populated areas. Mechanized harvesting costs around 8,000 somoni. See the difference? On top of that, people work until five or six in the evening. A combine operator can work until ten at night — the machine has very powerful headlights,” says Okhundjonov.
The farm also has three old Soviet-era combines. But their capacity was not enough to handle the full workload, so manual pickers still had to be brought in.
“Recently we bought two modern Chinese-made machines built on the American John Deere model. They’re not new — they’re used — and each cost $65,000. A new combine of that model costs around $140,000,” the farm director says.
He notes that the investment pays off in about a year. However, not every farmer can afford such equipment. The high upfront cost remains one of the main obstacles to a wider shift to mechanized harvesting.
Chinese seeds, film and drones
But mechanization in cotton farming begins long before the combine enters the field. The entire approach to growing cotton is changing — from sowing to plant care.
“ “Modern combines work with four-row planting: the spacing between rows must be 76 centimeters, and each row should be about 350 meters long. The old Soviet technology called for 60-centimeter spacing,” the farm director notes.
They also purchased new seeders from China. Now seeds are loaded into the machine and it does the rest on its own. Previously, several workers were needed for this.
The new technology also makes it possible to increase planting density, which has a positive effect on yields.
Where a hectare used to produce around 90,000–95,000 seedlings, it now produces more than 240,000.
Plant care has changed as well. Previously, once seedlings emerged, they had to be thinned by hand, removing excess shoots. That was followed by weeding and topping — removing the growing tip of the plant. All of these operations required additional costs and labor.
“ “Across all 429 hectares we planted using the new technology, there was not a single hectare that needed thinning. Previously, weeding one hectare cost more than 1,000 somoni, and topping cost another 1,500 somoni. We no longer have those expenses,” Okhundjonov explains.
The equipment has also begun to be used to protect crops. Drones now treat fields against weeds and pests. One of the most dangerous pests for cotton is the black cutworm, which can destroy a significant portion of the harvest.
Another experiment is sowing cotton under plastic film. Okhunjonov considers this method promising, though the farm is still evaluating the results. Drip irrigation, which is widely used in China, is also being considered, but the additional costs have so far held back its adoption.
The seeds themselves also play an important role in the new technology. According to the farmer, Chinese varieties are notable for their resistance to herbicides, drought and soil salinity.
“ – China has very well-developed plant breeding. They produce resistant varieties. That is very important for us. I remember that at one point the black cutworm destroyed cotton on 130 hectares — almost no harvest was left. If we were still using those seeds today, we would simply be losing our crop under our conditions,” Okhunjonov explains.
No man is an island
Walking along the already harvested rows, I can see how cleanly the combine picked the cotton. Closed bolls remain on the bushes — they will open later, and the combine will return to this field.
But manual labor has not yet disappeared entirely from cotton farming in Tajikistan. Already on the way out of the fields, I notice several women picking cotton by hand on a neighboring plot.
Mechanized cotton harvesting in Tajikistan currently covers only a small share of the total crop. In Sughd region in 2025, combines harvested about 1.7% of all cotton.
To change the situation, farmers need state support — above all, affordable loans and long-term leasing arrangements for purchasing combines. For small farms, shared use of equipment could be a solution. Another possible measure is subsidies for cotton produced and sold. A similar practice is already in place in Uzbekistan.
The transition to mechanized cotton farming is also on Tajikistan’s national agenda.
On July 1, 2026, the government approved the State Program for the Innovative Development of Cotton Farming for 2026–2030. It provides for the mechanization of field operations, the introduction of modern cultivation technologies, equipment upgrades, and the development of irrigation and land reclamation systems.
Source: https://asiaplus.new