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Uzbek farmers fear hunger in ravaged Kyrgyz fields
05.07.2010 12:57 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) —
Uzbek farmers, returning to Kyrgyzstan after fleeing a blood-drenched wave of ethnic violence, are finding their crops plundered, choked by weeds and withering in the fierce sun.
The implications of a ruined harvest in this poor agricultural country go beyond hunger, with the United Nations warning that food shortages and rising prices could spark another flare-up of the slaughter that devastated the south of this Central Asian country in June.
The United Nations said Thursday that it is sending an emergency mission to the south to assess the complex threat facing the thousands of farmers who live here. Kyrgyzstan depends on agriculture for 75 percent of its GDP.
«The farmers who grow for themselves have missed part of the summer harvest,» Dinara Rakhmanova, the head of the U.N. agriculture program in Kyrgyzstan, told The Associated Press. «Many of them have no money, and the refugees who have come back cannot sell their food at market because the markets have been destroyed.»
Starting June 10, mobs of ethnic Kyrgyz attacked the Uzbek minority, killing hundreds and leaving most of the main southern city of Osh in ruins, including all of its food bazaars.
As many as 400,000 Uzbeks, whose livelihoods depend mostly on growing or selling food, fled the violence. But the vast majority have now returned, with the farmers hoping to salvage some of the crops.
«Were hoping at best to eke out enough to survive,» Khamid Urayimzhanov said in his half-hectare (one-acre) field of watermelon seedlings, emaciated after three weeks of neglect. «But if the cold comes sooner than usual the whole harvest will be lost. I have nothing else to sell, so its in the hands of God now.»
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