A halt on farmland conversion needs a count and a date

Lieutenant Governor Aidar Maksat said in Kyzyl-Adyr on Monday that turning irrigated arable land in the Kara-Buura and Talas valleys into house plots "should be halted". He is right to raise it. The valleys have just delivered a record harvest, including 210,000 tonnes of potatoes, and irrigated land is the one farm asset that cannot be rebuilt once it is built on. A field that has a canal share and a road becomes a street. Neither the share nor the field comes back.

But the Herald's report of the meeting records what did not change. No rule was altered and no decree was announced. District administrations, whose heads are appointed by the Governor, still decide whether a plot changes use, and the head of the Kara-Buura administration told us approvals follow the existing procedure. The Ministry of Economy has been asked to count the land that has changed use, with no deadline. Asked whether the count would be published, its press secretary said only that the ministry would report when its figures were ready. A halt that nobody has defined, on a total that nobody has counted, is a statement of intent and not yet a policy.

That leaves farmers and builders guessing. Aibek Sadyr uulu, a farmer from Taldy-Suu, told the meeting that fields at the edge of the villages are sold for houses while the canals still serve them, and that buyers fence first and ask about the water afterwards. Ulan Chorobaev, whose Talas Turak-Jay Kurulush is building the 495-flat mortgage complex on city land, said developers want to know what "halt" means for plots already approved or in the pipeline. With building costs up 18% this year, he said, "nobody can plan on a word". Both are asking for the same thing, which is a definition.

There is also a reason for caution that the harvest makes plain. Potatoes sell at about IS 2 a kilogram, and the Ministry of Economy's own estimate shows farm output up 12% in volume but only 6% in value this year. A farmer who digs a bumper crop and earns the same as last year will weigh a cheque for a plot against another season at these prices. If the state wants the land kept in crops, a statement cannot be the whole answer. Farmers need to see that arable land pays.

The counting does not need to wait. District administrations already hold the approvals and can say how many plots changed use in each of the last five years, and how many of those were irrigated. The ministry can set those figures beside the business census, which closes on 30 November. Both are within reach before the Mejlis finishes with the 2027 draft budget this winter.

The Herald asks three things. The Ministry of Economy should give a date for its report and publish it, district by district. Each district administration should publish its list of approved conversions of irrigated land, with plot sizes and canal status. And the Lieutenant Governor's office should say whether plots already sold, approved or fenced fall inside the "halt". Without these, the valleys will keep losing fields to plots while the government debates how many it has lost.