Is Cotton Back in Fashion in Uzbekistan?

Just a few months ago, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was criticizing cotton production in Uzbekistan’s history as having turned people into “slaves of cotton.” However, figures released at the start of November showed Uzbekistan gathered the largest cotton harvest in its 35 years as an independent country, some 5 million tons. Mirziyoyev is now planning to open new cotton fields and boost cotton production using modern technology. Controversial Legacy Uzbekistan has long been associated with cotton. Tsarist Russian troops occupied most of what is now Uzbekistan between 1860 and 1875, coinciding with Russia’s loss of cotton imports from the United States that started with the beginning of the civil war there. Central Asia quickly became one of Russia’s biggest suppliers of cotton. Under the Soviet government, cotton production was expanded. Canals were dug, bringing water from rivers to the ever-expanding cotton fields being planted. Eventually, this led to the desiccation of the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world. Now, more than 90% has dried up. In Soviet times, gathering the cotton harvest was promoted as a patriotic duty, and citizens were expected to voluntarily go into the fields and help. Many who would not go voluntarily were forced to. This practice continued after the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991 and Uzbekistan became independent. Cotton was “oq oltyn,” Uzbekistan’s “white gold,” and its export was an important source of hard currency for the newly-independent state. Between 1 and 2 million people were conscripted annually to pick cotton at harvest time: “schoolchildren, students, teachers, and public-sector employees.” For many soldiers, picking cotton was part of their duty. In 2009, the international coalition Cotton Campaign started calling for a boycott of Uzbek cotton until Uzbekistan’s government stopped using forced labor. Many companies, mostly Western, honored the boycott. Mirziyoyev was speaking about this history, and shortly after he became president in late 2016, Uzbekistan started eliminating the use of child labor, then forced labor generally, and offering people wages to pick cotton at harvest time. By early 2022, the International Labor Organization reported that forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields had been nearly eradicated and “99% of those involved in the 2021 cotton harvest worked voluntarily.” Down with Cotton In July 2017, Mirziyoyev said, “Instead of [cotton], we should grow fruit and vegetables, melons and marrows, which are more profitable.” Later that same year, Mirziyoyev recalled the years he was put in charge of Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest, saying the government “never paid people a salary,” and that it was a humiliation for Uzbekistan. Mirziyoyev ordered some of the country’s cotton fields to be converted into land for edible crops. In 1990, the last year Uzbekistan harvested some 5 million tons of cotton, about 1.83 million hectares of land were used for cotton production. Up with Cotton In 2026, some 890,000 hectares of land were used for cotton-growing, and during a visit to the eastern Ferghana Province in April 2026, Mirziyoyev ordered an additional 50,000 hectares of “low-yield” cotton and...