Once again, Deutsche Welle has returned to the crisis over food shortages in Turkmenistan. What follows below is a translation of the Russian-language transcript:

The Turkmen government has failed to avoid the deepening crisis over the shortage of bread and flour. This information has been supplied to Deutsce Welle by sources in the Mary velyat.
As our correspondent Oraz Sariev has been told by a city worker in the Mary administration, bread is being delivered to the shops once a day, early in the morning, but it runs out after only half an hour. People have begun to ignore the low quality of the bread. According to Deutsche Welle’s sources, those that persist in queuing for bread are chased away by the police. Anybody rebelling against the police is taken off to the police station.
Sources also claim that the number of beggars that have taken to asking for bread instead of money has risen dramatically over the last few days. There are hundreds of beggars in the area of Mary city market. Most of these people have come from surrounding rural areas, where the availability of bread is even worse than that in the city. Many of them are wandering from courtyard to courtyard begging for bread.
In an interview with a Deutsche Welle correspondent, a retired army major said that it was the first time in all his years of living in Mary that he had seen people begging for bread. He was also of the view that most the beggars were from the countryside. According to this source, members of his family in the Takhtabazar district planted and harvested 16 million manats worth of wheat last year, but they were left with only two million manats after taxes were deducted. After that experience they were unwilling to harvest wheat, as they believe the state will merely confiscate the lion’s share of what they have grown with their hard work.
It is worth recalling that the “bread crisis”, which Deutsche Welle has reported before, also occurred in Turkmenistan in winter last year.

Yet, according to an article on the Turkmen State Information Agency website, the gross agricultural product in the period January-March 2006 totalled 2.8 trillion manats. The articles states that as a result of economic initiatives carried out by the state, as much as 96 percent of the country’s agricultural output is accounted for by the private sector.
Among the schemes designed to maximise the size of the wheat harvest is a proposal to supply owners of combine harvesters with free spare parts and maintenance material, so as to avoid any delays. It is apparent from the article, however, that a great deal of emphasis has been placed upon cotton and livestock breeding.
According to the Turkmen State Information Agency, as of April 1, the amount of large livestock in the country amounted to 2.35 million, up three percent on the previous year. Small livestock totalled 17.72 million, up by eight percent, and poultry came to 14.75 million, up by seven percent. These reported improved numbers across the board are said to be the result of technological advances made in the agricultural sector.
Tellingly, statistics for wheat harvests are not particularly forthcoming. The article does not address the issue of fiscal assistance for individual farming stakeholders raised in the Deutsche Welle report, choosing instead to focus upon the industrial measures being adopted to improve future yields. This consists, in practice of outlining the allocation of chemical fertilisers, such as nitric acid and phosphorous. This season, particularly abundant use was made of carbamide, which is the chief solid component of mammalian urine, apparently.