**1. Introduction**

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, five countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) along with other Soviet republics gained independence and entered a period of transition from planned to market-based economies [1]. In the early 1990s, the transition was particularly painful for the newly independent states due to the sharp economic decline, inflation, and disruption of production and trade ties with Russia and other territories of the former Soviet Union [2]. In no time, previously closed markets became open to global trade, but the countries of Central Asia were not able to immediately convert openness to sufficient gains due to the total lack of competitiveness [3]. Market principles called for the establishment of qualitatively new types of linkages and value chains based on competitive advantages rather than command planning and administrated supply networks. Underdeveloped transport infrastructure oriented on central parts of Russia (Soviet heritage), as well as landlockedness and remoteness from major economic centers and trade hubs, contributed to the degradation of the competitiveness of the Central Asian countries [2] and increased economic and social instability in the entire region.

Agriculture was among those sectors where production capabilities, trade links, and competitive advantages were cut in the most severe way. Before the start of the market transition, agriculture had been one of the major sectors in Central Asian economies and contributed up to 45% of their GDPs and provided employment to almost 50% of the labor force [4]. Despite the launch of agricultural and land reforms in 1992–1993, the performance of the agricultural sector has been rather weak across the region [5]. The volume of production of animal products (various kinds of meat and meat products), and some staple cereals (wheat) has fallen significantly. Apart from the general economic decline in Central Asian countries during the 1990s, the key reasons for such a bad performance are the low competitiveness of the agricultural sector and distortion of competitive advantages for the gain of the command economy. In Soviet times, each country of Central Asia specialized in the production of particular agricultural products according to the general plan (wheat and other grains in Kazakhstan, corn and lamb in Kyrgyzstan, cotton and fruits in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan) [6]. Command allocation indeed took into account available natural resources and capabilities of particular countries but created mono-specialization and did not allow diversification, which negatively affected both the competitiveness positions and flexibility of Central Asian economies when transitioning to the market-based principles of competition.

Along with the structural barriers, the development of competitive advantages in agriculture has been hindered by poor land management [7], land degradation and salinization [8], irrational water use [9], desertification and reduction of the areas under crops in the irrigated lands [10], and climate change effects such as higher temperatures, changing precipitation, and river runoff [11]. Those factors have led to low productivity levels across the entire agricultural sector. As vast territories are regularly used for extensive livestock husbandry, only a small portion of agricultural land can be used for crop production and horticulture [12]. The upshot is that agriculture has become less important as a source of livelihood for many people, agricultural revenues are partially replaced by remittances from labor migrants [13], while the continuing decline in agricultural production aggravates the standards of living and food security problems in rural areas, where over 90% of the population is now defined as poor and food insecure [14].

In recent decades, the food insecurity problem has emerged globally with Asia being one of the regions most critical to meeting the challenge of sustainable food supply [15]. Establishing food security, ensuring sustainable food production systems, ending hunger, and providing access by all people to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food are the targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030 [16]. As a part of the global community, the countries of Central Asia are also committed to achieving the sustainable development goals on the elimination of hunger and improvement of food security along the four dimensions of availability, access, stability, and utilization as prescribed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) [17]. These efforts resulted in a substantial improvement of food security in the region compared to the 1990s. In particular, the average prevalence of undernourishment decreased from 11% in the early 2000s to 6% in 2017 [18]. Nevertheless, significant levels of poverty along with poor availability and low accessibility of food staples [19] still keep the prevalence of undernourishment an issue of concern in Uzbekistan (7.4%), Kyrgyzstan (6.5%), and Turkmenistan (5.5%) [18]. Among the major threats to sustainable food security in Central Asia, Schroeder and Meyers [20] pointed out inadequate micronutrient intake, growing obesity rates, and high dependence on food imports which posed a risk to sufficient availability and economic accessibility of food products on the domestic markets. In recent years, FAO [18] has reported an increasing prevalence of severe food insecurity (PoSFI) in the region from 1.7% in 2015 to 3.5% in 2017. The PoSFI implies a probability of people having been unable to access nutritious and diverse food and having been forced to reduce the quantities of food eaten as a result of lack of money or other resources [21] and thus demonstrates that the food insecurity problem in Central Asia is primarily associated with economic aspects of sustainable development of the agricultural sector. To date, indeed, the agricultural sector has lost a dominating role in Central Asian economies amid the emergence of oil and gas and other resource-extraction industries. Nevertheless, it still contributes 23.3% of the GDP in Tajikistan, 20.8% in Kyrgyzstan, and 18.5% in Uzbekistan (compared to over 50% in the 1990s), but in hydrocarbon and gas-abundant Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, its contribution to the GDP is

no longer impressive (5.2% and 7.5%, respectively) [22]. For Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, agricultural trade remains one of the major sources of export revenues despite the substantial changes in trade patterns and the directions and structure of exports in the past decades.

According to Kurmanalieva and Parpiev [2], one of the most prominent features of the Central Asian trade since the recovery of the independence in 1991 has been its drastic reorientation from the former Soviet republics to the rest of the world, specifically, to Asia. Since the mid-1990s, the governments in Central Asia have been increasingly undertaking policy measures and activities with the specific goals of trade facilitation and improvement of connectivity with China [1], while China itself has been emerging as one of the key trade partners of Central Asia [23]. China has been gradually occupying those niches and gaps on the market which had been created by the disruption of trade and production ties between Central Asia, Russia, and other former Soviet republics. With the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China declared its commitment to improving infrastructural and trade connectivity along with sustainable value chains in Eurasia with Central Asia being a crucial component in the network. While neither agricultural trade nor food security has been specifically outlined among the BRI goals, both themes are of fundamental importance for China. The country has already made substantial contributions to combating rural poverty and food insecurity and improvement of the global stability of food production and supply through innovations, intensification of farming and agricultural productivity, and food safety [24]. In 2019, in its new National Strategy on Food Security, China declared its further commitment to every possible promotion of agricultural trade, active participation in global food security, and establishment of healthy and sustainable development of food value chains worldwide [25].

Between 2000 and 2018, interregional agricultural trade in Central Asia has been declining while international trade has been experiencing a fast growth of imports but the sluggish real growth of exports [13]. Exports of cotton, fruits, cereals, and some other products have been gradually reoriented from Russia and the EU to China and other Asian markets. Exports reached \$230.1 million in 2018, while imports increased from \$27.4 million in 2000 to \$553 million in 2018 (Table 1). Agricultural trade balance with China is steadily negative for the countries of Central Asia.


**Table 1.** Agricultural trade between China and the countries of Central Asia in 2000–2018, \$ million.


**Table 1.** *Cont*.

Source: Authors' development based on [26].

Low self-sufficiency in staple foods is a challenge for the countries of Central Asia [27]. High reliance on imports hinders the development of disintegrated value chains and heavily subsidized agricultural sector and imposes a threat to sustainable availability and accessibility of food products on the market. Both households and producers experience severe effects of food prices fluctuations as large percentages of households' and state budgets' incomes are spent on food imports [11]. Peyrouse [28] reports that in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, people spend 80% of their household incomes on food. This corresponds to the fact of Tajikistan's lowest level of food self-sufficiency in the region (31%) and indicates that Central Asian markets are particularly exposed to the instability of the global food market. In response to the increasing dependence on agricultural imports (not only with China but with Russia and the EU as well) and growing food insecurity and poverty levels, some countries of Central Asia, specifically, Kazakhstan and to a certain degree Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, adopted food self-sufficiency policies [29]. For low diversified industries with few competitive products, however, self-sufficiency policy rarely works out as a driver of competitiveness as it diverts resources to lower-efficiency sectors and thus triggers inappropriate use of the country's advantages. Given, first, the emergence of the food insecurity problem in Central Asia, second, food self-sufficiency policies of Central Asian governments, and third, the growing involvement of Central Asian countries in global agricultural market and trade with China, it is imperative to study the most appropriate use of various resources and advantages the countries possess.

With an increased awareness of the link between sustainable development of agricultural production, food security, and competitive advantages in trade [24], reliance on research has become more critical. One branch of studies analyzed trends in the agricultural sector in Central Asia in general and individually in certain countries. Schroeder and Meyers [20] conducted a comprehensive analysis of agricultural production and trade, constraints and bottlenecks in agricultural productivity growth, as well as the policies that may be implemented to shape sustainable food security and reduce malnutrition. Akter et al. [30] synthesized emerging issues and challenges that confronted food sector in Central Asia and called for the identification of competitive advantages, elaboration of development strategies, and setting priorities for future food, agriculture, and natural resource policy agendas for sustainable development of the agricultural sector and rural areas. There have been many studies that drifted away from food production and focused specifically on various dimensions of food security across the region of Central Asia. Thus, Babu and Pinstrup-Andersen [19] identified major challenges to food security across Central Asian countries and suggested the measures and policy transformations to facilitate economic reforms, reduce poverty, increase food security, and ensure sustainable use of natural resources. Akramov [31] addressed the impact of global food prices on the domestic market and policy responses taken by national governments to stabilize food markets.

There is an array of studies that address economic and trade linkages between Central Asia and China, but the majority of them pay inadequate attention to agricultural trade. Bird et al. [32] and Kokushkina and Soloshcheva [33] assessed the participation of Central Asian countries in the BRI based on the revealed comparative advantage and other indicators with a major focus on trade in resources and raw materials. Vakulchuk and Overland [34] analyzed the present state of relations between the countries of Central Asia and China and systematized the BRI's perceptions on the part of various stakeholders, including local rural communities and farmers, and found that many value chain actors remained weakly connected to Central Asia-China value chains. Another shortcoming is that those few studies related to both the BRI and agricultural collaboration in Central Asia concentrate on individual countries. Carter [35] reviewed the patterns of China's recent trade and investment policies in Central Asia in the cases of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, Bitabarova [36] conducted similar analysis for Kazakhstan, Babu and Reidhead [37] provided insights into poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition in Kyrgyzstan, while Asadov [27] searched for possible solutions to critical dependence on food imports and staple food self-insufficiency in Tajikistan.

A specific fragility of the advantages in Central Asia's agriculture calls for a comprehensive analysis on the regional level. The fragility and erosion of the advantages due to a variety of natural, technological, and economic factors bring instability to the entire value chain in agriculture. Reyer et al. [11] studied possible climate change impacts on the agricultural sector in Central Asia and found extreme vulnerability of competitive advantages to even slightest changes in precipitation, rainfall patterns, and heat extremes. Adding value allows to increase the share of processed higher-value agricultural products in export, as well as to improve both self-sufficiency and sustainability through growing farmers' income and more employment opportunities in agriculture [38], but the sustainability of agricultural value chains in Central Asia, nevertheless, remains scantily explored. Discretely, some references to the relevance of sustainable value chains for Central Asia can be found in the studies of Bloch [39], Rakhimov [40], Turaeva and Hornidge [41], and Pomfret [1,42]. Pirmatov et al. [38] attempted to conduct a comprehensive analysis of value-added chains in the production of cotton, wheat, rice, and fruit and found the unrealized potential for storing, freezing, processing, and packaging of even the most competitive products. The study of Pirmatov et al. [38] considered the socio-economic role of value-added agriculture for Central Asian countries but did not link the performance and sustainability of value chains with the exploitation of competitive advantages of particular countries of the region in food production and trade. Similarly, Rillo and Nugroho [43] studied the challenges to the development of integrated value chains without proper previous investigation of competitive advantages in agricultural sectors across the countries of Central Asia. Egilmez [44] covered different regions of the world and scarcely focused on Central Asia, while Hanf and Gadalyuk [45] conducted a detailed analysis of value chains in Kyrgyzstan but limited the study to the sector of small-scale farming.

Summarizing the above, the following gaps in Central Asia-China agricultural trade and the value chains agenda can be identified:


In this paper, the authors attempt to bridge these gaps by developing the approach to the identification of existing and potential competitive advantages in the spheres of agricultural production and food supply across the region of Central Asia. In the case of Central Asia-China trade in food and agricultural products, the study aims to elaborate the solutions to the problems of low competitiveness of agricultural sectors and in such a way to contribute to the improvement of the sustainability of agricultural value chains in the macro-region of Eurasia.

The remainder of this paper is divided into four sections. In Section 2, the authors review the most commonly used as well as the most appropriate approaches to the identification of competitive advantages in agricultural value chains. Based on this review, the five-stage methodology for the identification of the advantages is established. In Section 3, the authors present the results of the application of the methodology to the array of major food and agricultural products in Central Asia's export. In Section 4, the findings are discussed through the lens of the correspondence between the competitiveness of Central Asia's agricultural export and the prospects of food demand in China and China's agricultural investment in the region. The discussion concludes with the elaboration of policy measures for the promotion of the revealed advantages and the improvement of the sustainability of agricultural value chains.
