By the end of the current year, farmers of Fergana region of Uzbekistan intend to export fruits and vegetables for more than $400 million.
The farms of the region have planned to procure a total of 1.95 million tons of vegetables, fruits, grapes, melons and potatoes during this season. Companies from Russia and Asia promise to be the major importers of the products.
Such a performance was achieved by reducing cotton crops and grain cultures, and transfer of the released lands for the cultivation of fruits and vegetables. Modern agricultural technologies, drip irrigation, sorting and packaging equipment has played an important role. The demand for Uzbek agricultural products abroad is great, especially in Siberia and the Far East, for their environmental purity and safety, so farmers will keep increasing production volumes.
The producers are currently actively expanding orchards, the total area of which has already exceeded 50,000 hectares. The greenhouse economy has been growing concurrently with over 8,840 greenhouses in the region.
Farmers concern of quality characteristics of products, because a customer will always choose fruits and vegetables primarily by their appearance. Establishment of a network of refrigerating warehouses and sorting and packaging logistics centers has been in progress in the region. 180 warehouses with a total capacity of simultaneous storage of more than 51,000 tons are already in action. There are already operating. 16 new freezers for 11.500 tons have been built over the last year alone.
Today, Uzbekistan exports more than 180 kinds of fresh and processed fruit and vegetable products to more than 80 countries. By the end of the year, it is planned to deliver over 1.27 million tons of fruits and vegetables for $1.37 billion. By the end of 2020, the government intends to increase exports of fresh and processed fruit and vegetable products by more than 2.7 times, including canned food, concentrates, juices – by 2.5 times.
