The Ferghana Valley, the agricultural heartland of Uzbekistan, is a densely populated region of 10 million people, the vast majority of whom depend on irrigation to grow their crops and sustain their families.
The Ferghana Valley’s water comes primarily from the Syr Darya River and its tributaries, fed by snowmelt and glaciers in the mountains to the east. By the time water travels through the network of canals to reach the most distant communities in the region’s Ferghana district, supply sometimes falls short of demand, by approximately 30%.
Outdated and inefficient infrastructure, along with the impact of climate change, resulted in losses of over a billion cubic meters of water annually. That gap was felt most acutely between April and June, when crops need water most.
“During April and May sometimes, we used to bring water in canisters just to keep our land alive,” recalls Ortiqali Madumarov, a community elder who has lived in the Ferghana district his entire life.
How a New Pumping Station Transforms Local Farms
That changed in 2025, when the Avval-Logon pumping station was commissioned just outside Ortiqali’s village, one of 13 such facilities modernized through the second phase of the Ferghana Valley Water Resources Management Project. Fully automated and energy-efficient, this new station now delivers more than 60 million cubic meters of water annually.
This single facility supplies water to approximately 5,000 hectares of land across 14 villages, serving one agricultural cooperative, around 40 farming enterprises, and more than 3,000 landowners in the district.
“Last year this was a dry land plot. The water was simply not reaching us,” says Dilnoza Otaqulova, the elected chair of the mahalla — a traditional neighborhood-level citizens’ self-governing body — for the nearby Usmonobod village, while standing in an orchard that had been barren for years. “Now we are in the middle of the cherry harvest. Our community has 3,000 people, more than 700 households, and about 100 hectares of land. People here make their living from horticulture and livestock. What you see today would not have been possible without water.”
With reliable water now available, Dilnoza saw an opportunity for her community in silkworm breeding — an industry with deep roots across the Ferghana Valley, where mulberry trees are grown to feed caterpillars whose cocoons are used to produce silk thread.
As part of a government program launched in April 2026 to subsidize silkworm breeders and home-based producers, including women from low-income families, Dilnoza helped organize ten women from Usmonobod, who are now employed full-time in the process each spring. They receive silkworm eggs, feed the larvae on fresh mulberry leaves for 30 to 40 days, and harvest the cocoons before they are sold to local silk producers.
“Water is crucial in this process,” Dilnoza explains. “The more water the mulberry tree receives, the juicier the leaves, the faster the caterpillars grow, and the better the quality of the cocoon.”
