Recently, a friend and I found a dataset of production of agricultural resources in Kyrgyzstan, and we decided to analyze it. We produced a couple visualizations, and after looking at the data, we found that it is possible to see some interesting trends.

The general tendency we can observe is that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the whole food production sector in Kyrgyzstan suffered. Production levels of many of these crops fell sharply around the year of 1991.

Some products are recovering, but some are experiencing their lowest production rates in more than two decades. This happened to wool and tobacco: now their production levels are only 30% and 14% respectively from what it was in 1991. Sugar beet is also experiencing hard times after peaking in 2002 - this is quite a sad development, given the fact that Kyrgyzstan was one of the leading producers of sugar in the Soviet Union due to the suitable climate, and availability of processing facilities. Today, the sugar industry of Kyrgyzstan is represented by a few enterprises in Chui oblast, and sugar beets are grown only in Chui and Talas oblasts.

There is another set of products that after a sharp drop in 1994, have been in a stable condition for almost 20 years, showing no significant increase. These products are milk, eggs and meat. All these are mostly produced in Chui oblast, probably because the processing infrastructure is available in that area.

The most produced, and probably most consumed products in Kyrgyzstan, are wheat and potatoes. They have seen an increase of production over time; but as you can observe, the pattern of production is more volatile for wheat. This might be because wheat is more vulnerable to seasonal conditions, like drought or diseases. Production of berries and fruits are also subject to seasonal conditions, such as spring frost or hail.

Also, the visualization gives a distinct image of the main agricultural products for each region. For example, most part of potatoes (38%) is produced in Issyk-Kul oblast. Wheat is also mostly produced in Chui and Issyk-Kul oblasts. Other products, like fruits and berries, are famous in all the southern oblasts - Jalalabad, Osh and Batken. There are also some problems with data. For example, we can see that rice production had increased greatly in Talas oblast, but since 2005 there is no data available. We didn’t look into why this data is absent from the dataset, but without it, we can’t be sure of what is the actual situation. For absent data points, we simply give them value of zero; that is also the reason that most charts start from zero.

We spent a good while playing with the charts and looking at the data. They are interesting. I invite you to also look at it, and play around with the visualizations. You are welcome to leave any comments or suggestions. Also, if you have any interesting data, we will be happy to look at it together!