ABSTRACT

As a result of the “Virgin Lands” program begun by the Soviet Union in the 1950’s, over 30 million hectares (Mha) of native steppe in Kazakhstan were cultivated to wheat production (McCauley, 1976). This transformed an ecosystem that previously supported nomadic grazing into cropland that supplied over 25% of wheat demand within the Soviet Union (Kaser, 1997). As a result of this activity large areas of marginal land were brought into crop production and this led to widescale degradation of soils in addition to excess use of fertilizers and large irrigation projects that caused formation of saline soils and water pollution. Overall effect was increased desertification and deterioration of the surrounding ecosystems (Grote, 1998). With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan became independent and became the second largest country formed out of the disintegration. The gain of independence destroyed the highly regulated market system established in the Soviet era and generally resulted in increased poverty, high inflation, scarcity of food and other products, and large declines in grain production (Alaolmolki, 2001). This in turn has led to wide scale abandonment of marginal croplands which has left the landscape populated with abandoned production fields with degraded soils.