Match the beginning of the phrases with their correct endings. Explain your choice and the meaning of the phrases

agricultural crops

farming documents

private sector

long-term conditions

sale regulations

market ownership

new infrastructure

confirmation objective

climatic areas

industrial of land

Your teacher has asked you to bring to class current news or issues about agricultural sector of Kazakhstan. Prepare two or three brief news about agriculture of Kazakhstan today and then report to class.

AGRICULTURE IN KAZAKHSTAN

For more information visit the website of the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan at www.agrikaz.kz

The agricultural sector is one of the key elements of the country's economy. Kazakhstan is one of the major producers of marketable grain, meat, and wool. Farming areas occupy more than 220 million hectares and grain growing areas occupy about 13-14 million hectares. Farming areas comprise 74% of the country's total area. The pasture area totals 185.7 million hectares - 68% of all the farming areas. Individuals, collective farms and organizations utilize 81% of all farming areas and 98 % of all pastures.

Kazakhstan has embarked upon agricultural sector restructuring through the establishment of new corporate entities and privatization. Private ownership is now the dominant organization for agricultural production.

The farming law provides the following rights:

· Private ownership of property (land, real estate),

· Free separation of land and property from any collective farming to establish the private farms,

· Property protection from illegal expropriation,

· Freedom of the choice concerning the type of activity followed and product operations,

· Equal access to markets, materials, information and finance.

There are 70,000 farms, of which 99,6 % were in the private sector. 61,000 farms were transferred on the basis of long-term tenure, involving 27.2 million hectares of land, 4300 farming cooperatives, over 4,000 partnerships 505 JSC and other entities. Large farms account for 73,5 % of land, small farms 18,6%, state-owned firms 4,0 %, and individuals 0,2%.

Land regulations

The 1st stage will involve the adoption of the law "On land." Private ownership of unoccupied farming lands or state reserve lands will be introduced. This will cover arable land, or land identified as being available for sale to local residents only.

The 2nd stage will complete the process of land privatization.

The land law of the Republic of Kazakhstan already allows different operations to exist, with the right to inherit ownership, or to sell, grant, lease, pledge and transfer rights to joint-stock companies, associations and cooperatives (including those with the foreign participation).

In order to attract foreign capital the period of land lease available to foreign investors was extended up to 99 years.

According to state statistical data, more than 2.3 million people are landowners.

More than 1.9 million transactions in the abatement, lease, sale and purchase of land use rights were arranged and 93% of all private farms received their land ownership confirmation documents.

The new market infrastructure is being developed in accordance with the agricultural plan, adopted by the President.

All the country's new regulations are designed to assist the development of a market infrastructure. 167 wholesale markets, 22 commodity exchanges and 13 credit associations are already functioning and associations of commodity producers and other services organizations are also established.

Currently there are 34 grain producing companies-members of the grain union of Kazakhstan. This is a NGO, acting on a voluntary basis in order to combine efforts and to coordinate the grain market activity.

Characteristics of the country's agricultural production

The territory of Kazakhstan includes forest-steppe, steppe, half-deserted and deserted zones. The natural climatic conditions determine the low natural efficiency of agricultural arable lands that require significant volumes of investments.

These investments should be distributed among the following nine agricultural production zones.

Grain-animal farming zone occupies large territories of dry temperate steppe and covers 64 agricultural districts of the country.

This zone covers 32.8 million hectares of agricultural arable land, including 14.0 million hectares occupied by grain fields (42.7%), with a per capita distribution of 51 hectares of arable lands. This is the country's highest indicator. Soils are black and dark chestnut, the annual precipitation level totals nearly 300 mm.

The large areas of arable land provide cost-effective opportunities for private grain producing industry and animal farm development. Conditions in this zone are favorable for the production of large amounts of high-quality grain as well as meat and dairy farming.

Plant Growing

Non-irrigated agriculture is practiced in north, northeastern and central Kazakhstan - areas characterized by high precipitation levels. This area covers 34 million hectare - 12% of the total land area of Kazakhstan. The growth in non-irrigated areas in these regions was caused by the development of virgin and disused lands. According to the research data, 12 million hectares of ploughed land in Kazakhstan requires erosion protection and over 5 million-hectare are washed away areas.

The productive soil layer (humus) loss over the last 25-30 years has totaled 20-25%.

According to quality analysis 4.7% of the soil has a high level of humus (23.9%), 46.5% has a low level (2-4%) and 24.9% a very low level (below 2%).

Irrigated agriculture is developed mainly in southern and southeastern regions and is determined by low precipitation levels and hot climate conditions. The total irrigated land area is 2 million hectares.

The application of new water saving methods of soil irrigation and the reconstruction of land used for rice and other forms of crop growing is very costly and demands substantial investment.

A reduction in fertilizer usage has occurred in Kazakhstan due to their high cost. Increasing consumption will require investment in the mineral fertilizer production industry and the introduction of cost reducing technologies.

Grain crops

Kazakhstan is one of the world's largest grain producers and exporters. Soil and climate provide ideal conditions for growing wheat, barley, rice, corn, millet and buckwheat.

The main grain crop is wheat. Kazakhstan wheat is high-class with a high protein content.

The average annual export of grain crops for the period of 1995-1998 was 3 to 3.4 million tons, with major customers including the CIS states of the Russian Federation, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Belorus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and the Ukraine.

There is a growing tendency to export Kazakhstan grain to other international markets. The list of Kazakhstan grain importers now includes Austria, Afghanistan, the UK, Venezuela, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Turkey, Switzerland, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Korea and Mongolia.

Industrial crops

The main industrial crops grown in Kazakhstan include beet, cotton and oil crops. Cotton is the most important industrial crop grown on the irrigated soils of southern Kazakhstan. The oil crops grown in Kazakhstan include sunflower, flax, soybean, mustard, etc. The most widespread crop is sunflower.

Work in groups of three or four. Choose each topic related to the text issues and then discuss with your group. Suggest possible solutions, recommendations to improve the agricultural sector of the country. If in the future you will accidentally run your own business in agricultural sector what points you will chose? Imagine and share with your business plan.

Reading 3

K-W-L chart

Divide into three groups and before reading the text fill in the “K” column to share as a group what you KNOW about the subject/issue. After fill in the “W” column what you WANT TO KNOW about the given topic/issue. After having read the article fill in the “L” column to share what you LEARNED about the topic/issue.

KNOW	WANT TO KNOW	LEARNED