Almaty. July 21. Information Center - The months of drought that hit Central Asia have been devastating to nomads in western Kazakhstan. Without grass and feed, thousands of cows and horses would starve to death. The government has taken some time to admit the crisis, but authorities have begun to act after months of denial of charges seeking help on social media, Illinois News Today reports.

In late May, Western Mangystau activist Berdimurat Torekenov used Facebook to declare a state of emergency and urge authorities to plan for delivery of feed to suffering farmers. His photographs of a lean horse looking for water and grass in the dry meadows were widely disseminated by the Kazakh media. Nomads usually rely on lush summer pastures and hay harvested in the fall, but this year they have barely grown after dry winters and springs.

“We don’t have time to think, we just act. The government should declare a state of emergency and I call on all citizens to reach out to local farmers suffering from drought,” Trekenov wrote on May 27. It was. -The nomads affected by Mangystau are small homegrown farmers. Their only source of income is their dying livestock.

Immediately after the president dismissed the Minister of Agriculture, authorities declared an emergency in the Aralsk district of the Kyzylorda region on July 14, admitting that 90% of the meadows were unable to sustain their lives due to low rainfall. ..

However, Armazbek Sadirbayev, president of the National Animal Breeding Association, believes the government is downplaying the scope of the die-off.

“The government is unaware of the actual scale of the tragedy. Official statistics show that 500 cows died in the Aralsk district of Kyzylorda, but in only one village there, 500 dead cows. “We counted,” Sadyrbaev told news site 365info.kz. July 12th.

As Sadyrbaev suggested, if authorities deliberately downplay the numbers, they fear incurring more costs in addition to the government’s high pandemic response that doubled Nur-Sultan’s budget deficit last year. It may be.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Yerbol Karashukeev visited Mangistau on July 15 and told local farmers that the government plans to spend 1.9 billion tenge (about $ 4.5 million) to reduce hay and feed prices by 17%. It was. He also promised to organize the transport of feed to the afflicted areas. The money has not been paid yet.

Instead, so far the only assistance has been provided by volunteers.

A group in the Turkistan region organized a hay-filled freight train freight car and distributed it free of charge in Mangystau. It was delivered on July 14th and distributed to local farmers.

Feed prices are rising rapidly. Mangistau’s popular Instagrammer, Azamat Sarsenbayev, wrote on July 16 that the local market is “totally confused.” He said that some of the available were just twigs.

“Farmers are desperately selling lean livestock as feed prices rise daily, but as the drought spreads to other parts of the world, the number of buyers has dropped dramatically,” Salsenbayev said. Stated. Die off.

Authorities should have expected food shortages, he said, adding that local farmers also had to change their way and many had more animals that the land could support.

Scientific consensus on climate change believes that Central Asia will experience increasingly extreme weather, such as drought, and general warming, which will lower the water level of glacier-supplied rivers. A new paper by scientists from the China Meteorological Administration has found that dry West Kazakhstan will see more rain in the coming decades.

But for the Mangystau and Kyzylorda herds, that’s not enough. Kazhydromet forecasters are not seeing rest on the horizon.

Kazakh social media warns about drought, livestock death