Can domestic wheat farming meet the climate change-induced challenges of national food security in Uzbekistan?

ABSTRACT

This study is the first to develop food supply and demand projections over the 21st century for Uzbekistan by considering the combined effects of climate change and soil salinization. The study results suggest that rising summer temperatures and soil salinity will considerably reduce wheat production. Projections indicate that a large wheat supply–demand gap will emerge in the midterm, particularly under the SSP3-RCP7.0 scenario. For the two more pessimistic scenarios, supply losses of about 24–29% are expected by the end of the century. Supply–demand gaps of up to 2.7 million tons of wheat would pose serious challenges to national food security.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change impact
• food security
• irrigated wheat farming
• crop yield simulation
• soil salinity
• Uzbekistan

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge and thank the organizers of the ADBI conference entitled ‘Water Resource Management in Agriculture for Achieving Food and Water Security under Climate Change in Asia’, 26–27 October 2022, for the opportunity to present our paper, and we thank the discussants for their useful feedback. We are also grateful for the valuable comments we received from the anonymous reviewers.

Author contribution statement

Mashkhura Babadjanova: investigation, methodology, formal analysis, software, writing, original draft. Ihtiyor Bobojonov: conceptualization, methodology, writing, review and editing. Maksud Bekchanov: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing, review and editing. Lena Kuhn: conceptualization, validation, resources, writing, review and editing. Thomas Glauben: writing, review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2023.2290523.

Additional information

Funding

This article was written within the project ‘An Innovative Pilot Program on the Re-Integration of Scientists to Central Asia: Research and Capacity Building on Food Chains under Climate Change (IPReS)’ supported by the Volkswagen Foundation (VolkswagenStiftung) and implemented by the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Development in Transformation Economies (IAMO). Maksud Bekchanov is grateful for the HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (SIMARIS – 101064680) for funding his research.