Kazakh farmers to pay more for water overuse

• separate PIN codes have been obtained;
• colouring of diesel fuel in yellow, blue and red colours;
• creation of a separate virtual warehouse for diesel fuel in the electronic invoice system.

For this purpose, we are introducing intelligent land management systems. We extract valuable information from big data. As a result, the economy grows and products reach from the producer to the buyer faster and easier," Dmitriy Mun said.

Now 116 million hectares of agricultural land are under monitoring. Since 2022, 12 million hectares of land have been returned to state ownership due to inefficient use. In 2025, it is planned to return another 2 million hectares. 5 million hectares of agricultural land have been redistributed for the local population," Dmitriy Mun said.

Such technologies are widely used, for example, in the Netherlands - the second country in the world in terms of agricultural exports," Dmitriy Mun explained.

• Chat-bot assistant with AI elements for subsidising agricultural applications - AI automatically checks applications and reduces the percentage of rejections due to incorrect data (errors are down from 30% to 5%).
• Intelligent soil analysis system - reduces manual labour by 75-80%, improves recommendation accuracy by up to 95%.
• Drones with AI for pest control - reduces crop losses by 25-30%.

Digitalisation is a key factor in sustainable and competitive agriculture. Modern digital technologies have been introduced in Kazakhstan to ensure transparency of land data, effective monitoring of resources and reduction of bureaucracy. Kazakhstan's IT companies are developing world-class solutions to increase yields, reduce costs and manage risks. The goal for the future is to widely implement digital technologies, expand cooperation between government, business and science, as well as the use of IoT, drones, AI and Big Data," Dmitriy Mun summarised.

In order to ensure a solid fodder base, it is planned to bring the area of fodder crops to 3.4 million hectares. The area of oilseeds will increase to 3.3 million hectares, which allows to load processing plants. The planned areas will fully meet the needs of the domestic market," the Minister of Agriculture said.

In 2018-2022 Kazagrex was under trust management, which led to the reduction of narrowly specialised staff. Such experiments are unacceptable, given the importance of seed expertise for the country's food security. Taking into account the negative experience, we propose to reconsider the issue of privatisation of Kazagrex," the head of the Ministry of Agriculture said.

In November 2024, for the first time, early financing of field works of the subsequent agricultural season was launched, crediting channels were expanded: for the first time, a loan for sowing can be obtained through social-entrepreneurial corporations. Multichannelisation is important in order to avoid a ‘bottleneck’ in financing," Aidarbek Saparov said.

• to ensure full readiness of machinery, including repair work and preventive maintenance in order to avoid downtime and fulfil optimum agronomic timelines;
• to organise timely distribution of diesel fuel;
• to keep under special control the issue of seed quality expertise;
• to step up work on contracting farmers to supply fertilisers.

The Government session chaired by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov considered the issue of digitalisation of the agro-industrial complex. The Minister of Agriculture Aidarbek Saparov and Deputy Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry Dmitry Mun made reports on the ongoing work, primeminister.kz reports. Currently, the Ministry of Agriculture has 4 information systems on its balance sheet. These are the identification of farm animals (ISA); the Unified Automated System for the Management of Agroindustrial Complex Sectors e-Agriculture (UASA); the Unified State Information System for Subsidies (GISS); and the Information System for Crediting the Population Auyl Amanaty. An information system for traceability of crop production is under development. In the sphere of agro-industrial complex 93 state services are provided, 98 per cent of them in electronic format. In 2024, electronic services were used more than 2.6 million times. Re-engineering was carried out for 11 groups of business processes, 7 of them for land resources and the rest for crop production. As a result, the number of documents required for reporting was reduced by 83%. The number of steps for farmers has decreased by 85%, the time of service delivery has decreased by 97%. Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov emphasised that at the first forum of agricultural workers the Head of State set the task of digital transformation of the agro-industrial complex. In this regard, the Government pays special attention to the introduction of elements of smart technologies in all sectors of agriculture. Specific goals and key areas have been identified. Through the use of digital tools it is necessary to ensure the accuracy of data on the need for financial resources, reporting, sowing areas, livestock. The Head of the Government stressed that digitalisation should contribute to increasing transparency and efficiency of state support measures. "It is important to introduce IT-tools in the accounting of agricultural land. It is necessary that their digitisation will contribute to the rational use of land and pastures, balanced sowing planning. Space monitoring of all agricultural lands and the use of drones should be more widely applied," Olzhas Bektenov said. Another important issue is the system of identification of livestock and crop products. It is necessary to build a transparent chain of products from their origin to the end consumer. First of all, this system should be oriented to the accounting of produced products, guarantee of their quality, control of biological and veterinary safety. Filat stressed the need to make greater use of digital solutions and artificial intelligence in forecasting climate risks, crop yields and market prices for foodstuffs. Besides, due to the application of artificial intelligence, it is expected to optimise the processes of irrigation, the use of plant protection products and fertilizers, the consumption of fodder, as well as the management of the fleet of agricultural machinery. "Today, the problem of accuracy of statistical data in the spheres of animal husbandry, crop production, accounting of grain and product stocks in stabilisation funds, storage facilities, determination of soil moisture and ensuring veterinary safety remains relevant. All these issues should be solved through full digitalisation of the data recording system," Olzhas Bektenov noted. In this regard, the head of the Government gave a number of instructions to the Ministries of Agriculture and Digital Development. Together with regional akimats to develop a digital map of agricultural land by the end of 2025; Together with akimats to complete the development of traceability system in crop production by 1 September 2025; On the instructions of the Head of State, a National Agricultural Census is planned to be held in 2025. Based on its results, to carry out full digitisation of the results, their analysis and constantly update the database.

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The state has taken all the necessary measures to carry out sowing operations. It is important to ensure effective and organised implementation of these measures. The Ministry of Agriculture should direct preferential lending only to support efficient and conscientious farmers," Prime Minister pointed out.

• For effective state support the Ministry of Agriculture together with the Holding Baiterek should take measures to optimise and simplify the procedures for lending and subsidies.
• The Ministries of Energy, Agriculture and regional akimats should ensure control over the supply of cheaper fuel in the established volumes. Akimats should provide complete data on regional operators within a week. I instruct to apply the strictest measures against companies and individuals who allow misuse of distributed fuel.
• The Ministry of Water Resources together with the Ministry of Agriculture and akimats should take measures for uninterrupted supply of irrigation water to farmers. Akimats should take measures on snow retention and moisture accumulation.

As Head of State stressed, the priority of our work should be large infrastructure and industrial projects, development of transport and logistics, as well as digitalisation and artificial intelligence. The government will control the status of implementation of projects important for the country. It is necessary to actively involve co-investors, gradually reducing the share of the state in the economy," Olzhas Bektenov emphasised.

Kazakhstan and Georgia effectively interact at different levels, including cooperation between parliaments, governments and government agencies," Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said.

Strengthening the political and economic cooperation is of great importance for us. We are ready to actively support Kazakhstan’s interests in various formats, including multilateral platforms," the Georgian Prime Minister said.