Covering Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The protein system
This is a wheat, dairy and mutton economy. Population-weighted protein supply is about 103.5 grams per person per day, of which 48.5 grams comes from animal sources, above requirement in all eight members and ranging from 111.4 grams in Uzbekistan to 83.1 in Tajikistan.[2][3] In 2023 the region carried 31.5 million cattle, 70.0 million sheep, 13.5 million goats and 209 million chickens, and produced 24.25 million tonnes of cow's milk, 1.13 million tonnes of eggs and 4.07 million tonnes of meat, of which chicken and pork together supplied only 862,000 tonnes.[7] Fish is close to irrelevant, with 611,000 tonnes of output and a food supply of 3.9 kilograms per person per year.[1][32]
Grain reveals the internal architecture. In MY2025/26 the eight members produced 29.57 million tonnes of wheat against 27.55 million tonnes of consumption, exporting 13.44 million and importing 11.45 million, though FAO GIEWS puts the 2025 Kazakh crop at 18.0 million tonnes against USDA's 19.33.[8][12] Almost all of the surplus is Kazakh and almost all of the deficit is everyone else's: 70.1 per cent of Kazakhstan's 10.19 million tonnes of exports in MY2024/25 stayed inside the region, led by 4.38 million tonnes to Uzbekistan, with a further 17.8 per cent going to Afghanistan.[11] The Caucasus buys elsewhere, Armenia taking every tonne of its 2024 wheat imports from Russia and Georgia 99.5 per cent.[26][31]
Durable domestic capacity: 64
Quantitative score 69, adjusted down 5 points
Our computation from FAO Food Balance Sheets, weighting each commodity's production-over-domestic-supply ratio (capped at 100 per cent) by its protein in food supply, puts regional protein self-sufficiency at 80.4 per cent and animal-protein self-sufficiency at 88.3 per cent, reflecting milk and red meat being produced where they are eaten, with member scores running from 86.8 per cent in Turkmenistan and 86.3 in Kazakhstan down to 44.9 in Georgia.[1] Kazakhstan is the more reliable high-end reading: Turkmenistan's official production statistics are not independently verifiable, and its computed self-sufficiency rests on them (see country note).[19] Undernourishment is below 2.5 per cent in five of the eight and reaches 8.0 per cent only in Tajikistan.[4]
The visible gap is poultry, at 26 per cent self-sufficiency in Armenia, 33 in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia and 40 in Turkmenistan in 2022, with Kazakhstan importing 141,000 of the 434,000 tonnes of chicken it consumed in MY2025/26.[1][10] This is a line the region has chosen to buy rather than build.
We apply a 5-point deduction because the base is degrading in both of its main forms. Uzbekistan generates 11.9 million tonnes of the region's milk and 1.12 million of its 2.37 million tonnes of beef on fodder grown in a basin withdrawing 123 per cent of its renewable water.[5][7] In the dryland north, Kazakh Institute for Land Surveying data reported by USDA record a fall of 17 per cent in soil fertility over twenty years, alongside a UNDP estimate that 75 per cent of Kazakh soil is degraded, with 75 to 87 per cent of northern arable land under wheat every year and nitrogen applied at 2.3 kilograms per hectare.[6][11] Both are documented degradation of the base rather than forecast risk.
Resource headroom: 35
Quantitative score 43, adjusted down 8 points
Land looks abundant on a single-year reading. Kazakhstan holds 1.483 hectares of arable land per person, still among the highest figures in the world, and the regional average of 0.415 hectares is roughly double the global level.[20] The protein mix is light on primary resources too: ruminants supply 79 per cent of meat output and the region produces 118 per cent of the oilmeal it consumes, so growth in animal protein draws on neither imported soy nor wild fishmeal.[1][7][9]
Water is the deeper constraint. Population-weighted water stress under SDG indicator 6.4.2 is about 81 per cent, from 135.2 per cent in Turkmenistan and 123.0 in Uzbekistan down to 33.6 in Kazakhstan and 4.2 in Georgia.[5] Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan withdraw more than their entire renewable resource, and hold 194 and 468 cubic metres of internal freshwater per person against 15,658 in Georgia.[20] The average hides the structural fault: the water falls in the Kyrgyz and Tajik mountains while the irrigated protein is produced downstream.
Tested against irrigation-equipped share of arable land, agricultural credit orientation, and cropland and arable-land change since 2000, the stock reading understates a land constraint the single-year figures do not show. Land equipped for irrigation already covers about 30 per cent of both arable land and cropland region-wide, a high figure against other regions tested on the same protocol, but the equipped area has fallen 4.0 per cent since 2000, from 12.87 to 12.36 million hectares, while arable land itself fell 0.7 per cent and cropland 0.5 per cent, the only region tested whose land base did not expand at all over the period.[39] Regional population grew 39.1 per cent over the same twenty-four years, so arable land per person fell 28.6 per cent and cropland per person 28.5 per cent.[39][20] Georgia's collapse drives the extreme: arable land fell from 793,000 to 274,480 hectares, 65.4 per cent, an independent World Bank series showing the same fall to 304,000 hectares by 2023, concentrated between 2003 and 2010.[39][20] Kazakhstan itself lost 23.8 per cent of arable land per person, and irrigation equipment there fell 17.7 per cent even as arable land grew, meaning its wheat expansion has run onto more unbanked dryland rather than banked water, consistent with the fertility loss already costed in capacity.[39] Only Armenia gained per-person land, and only because its population fell 5.8 per cent, not because it expanded anything.[39][20] The indicators put this pillar at 43, below what the arable-land and water-stress stock figures alone would suggest, given this newly quantified land base that has not grown in twenty-four years and the accompanying per-capita decline.
Credit access is real but incomplete. FAOSTAT's agriculture orientation index for credit, parity 1.00, is measurable in six of eight members and runs from 0.27 in Azerbaijan to 1.34 in Kyrgyzstan, with Tajikistan at 0.82, Kazakhstan at 0.66, Armenia at 0.64 and Georgia at 0.39.[40] Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan carry no series in any year, and together they hold 44 per cent of the region's population, so the two most water-stressed members cannot be checked for agricultural capital access from published data.[40][20] Flagship mobilisation splits the same way. Turkmenistan's Golden Age Lake, meant to dispose of drainage water from irrigated cotton land and protect it from salinisation, has cost an estimated USD 4.5 to 6 billion since the late 1990s and remains unfilled a quarter-century later, with outside estimates now putting completion at about 50 years at current inflow.[42] Uzbekistan's water-saving programme is the opposite case, delivered rather than announced: coverage of irrigated land rose from 4 to 50 per cent between 2020 and 2025 on USD 5.36 billion of combined state and foreign investment, and its 2025-2028 follow-on targets a further 1.4 million hectares.[41]
The 2026 season is testing the water constraint directly. Amu Darya flow was at 66.8 per cent of norm on 11 February 2026, Syr Darya inflows were forecast 3.2 billion cubic metres below normal, and Uzbek conveyance losses run as high as 40 per cent.[21][22] We deduct 6 points for the Qosh Tepa canal, a funded and largely built diversion rather than an announced intention. Its design abstraction is up to 10 cubic kilometres a year, about a third of the river's flow, and it is built to convert 550,000 hectares of desert along a 285 kilometre alignment, with full operation targeted for 2028.[24][28] Jamestown reported phase two more than 80 per cent complete at the end of 2024, put the diversion at up to 20 per cent of the river's flow rather than a third, and cites estimates of a 15 per cent cut in Uzbekistan's Amu Darya supply against up to 80 per cent for Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan sits outside the region's water-sharing arrangements, so no mechanism exists to absorb the shortfall.[25] A further 2 points come off for the realisability findings: the Golden Age Lake failure and the credit blank in the two members that most need financed water infrastructure outweigh, by a narrow margin, the genuine funded progress Uzbekistan has delivered.
Import exposure: 50
Quantitative score 56, adjusted down 6 points
Assessed as one unit the region looks robust. The population-weighted cereal import dependency ratio is 15.2 per cent, held down by Kazakhstan's minus 59.4 per cent, and it exports more wheat than it imports.[4][8] It is also close to immune from the maritime chokepoints that define exposure elsewhere: no member's cereal imports transit Hormuz, Malacca, Suez or Panama, and the Russian wheat on which the Caucasus depends moves within the Black Sea. The exception is feed protein, since the 135,000 tonnes of Argentine soybean cake Azerbaijan and Georgia bought in 2024 reaches them through the Turkish Straits.[31] That immunity is bought at the price of being landlocked: seven of the eight have no sea access and the eighth, Georgia, is the least self-sufficient producer.[1][23] Every route to world markets runs overland through Russia, Iran or China, or across a Caspian corridor of modest scale. The Middle Corridor moved 4.1 million tonnes across the Caspian in 2024, about 6 per cent of the northern route's 100 million tonne capacity, with around 5 million expected for 2025; the Caspian has been falling by up to 30 centimetres a year since 2020, cutting rail tank car ferry traffic on the Baku to Kuryk route by 22 per cent; and Georgia's Anaklia relief project has been cut from 150 to 50 million lari for 2026 while Poti and Batumi approach capacity.[23][30][33]
Excluding Kazakhstan, the cereal import dependency ratio rises to 34.6 per cent, reaching 75.0 per cent in Armenia, 66.1 in Georgia and 48.4 in Tajikistan.[4] We deduct 6 points because the aggregate cannot express the concentration underneath it. On FAOSTAT's 2024 trade matrix, six of the eight take 90 per cent or more of their wheat imports from one supplier: Armenia 100 per cent, Kazakhstan 99.7, Georgia 99.5 and Azerbaijan 90.2 from Russia, Uzbekistan 99.6 from Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan 99.9 from Kazakhstan on 2023 data.[31] Kazakhstan's own crop is forecast to fall from 19.33 to 15.0 million tonnes in one season.[8][11] A poor Kazakh harvest is a regional event, and Russian export restrictions, which the FREE Network notes recur every two to three years, reach the Caucasus within weeks.[27]
Upstream dependence: 62
Quantitative score 66, adjusted down 4 points
This is the counterintuitive result. Nitrogen production of 2,319 thousand tonnes exceeds agricultural use of 1,762 thousand, a ratio of 132 per cent, built on Turkmen and Uzbek gas, while potash output covers 134 per cent of use and phosphate 91 per cent from Kazakh Karatau rock.[6] Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are substantial net energy exporters and Uzbekistan is close to balance, so the energy behind fertiliser, pumping and cold chains is largely sovereign for four fifths of the population.[20]
Feed protein is also mostly domestic, which is rare. Cottonseed meal, a by-product of the region's own cotton crop, supplies 907 thousand tonnes, and oilmeal production of 2,257 thousand tonnes covers 118 per cent of the 1,909 thousand consumed, leaving imported soybean meal at about 22 per cent of use on USDA PSD's marketing-year consumption balance, the same basis as the production and consumption totals either side of it.[9] FAOSTAT's Detailed Trade Matrix records a much larger 400,919 tonnes of soya bean cake entering Uzbekistan in 2024, against PSD's 70,000, but that is a gross customs total that does not separate Uzbekistan's own feed use from soybean meal moving on by rail to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and northern Afghanistan; PSD tracks Azerbaijan, off that corridor, closely against FAOSTAT (151,000 against 145,608), consistent with a transit effect specific to Uzbekistan.[9][31] Feed grain is domestic, with Kazakh barley at 3.59 million tonnes and Kyrgyz maize at 810 thousand.[8] The live disruption is animal health rather than supply: Kazakhstan banned Russian livestock and feed grain imports in late March 2026 after a Russian disease outbreak, exempting milling wheat of class 3 and above.[11]
We deduct 4 points because the surplus is produced by five states and consumed by eight, and because a quarter of the population sits outside it altogether. Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan produce no nitrogen, phosphate or potash at all, and Armenia additionally buys about 80 per cent of its gas from Russia, so one supplier holds both its fertiliser and the energy behind its food system.[6][26] Georgia's Rustavi plant exports 150,740 of its 178,974 tonnes of nitrogen output while running on imported gas.[6] Breeding genetics, veterinary products and machinery are imported region-wide and carry no weight here.
Access and affordability: 73
Quantitative score 73, no adjustment applied
The population-weighted picture is more comfortable than the import and headroom pillars suggest, but it hides sharp contrasts. On the World Bank/FAO Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet series, 3.4 per cent of Kazakhstan's population and 6.2 per cent of Uzbekistan's could not afford a healthy diet in 2025, against 22.1 per cent in Kyrgyzstan and 44.0 per cent in Armenia, with Azerbaijan at 0.7 per cent; the sub-regional aggregate for the five Central Asian members fell from 16.6 to 11.3 per cent between 2023 and 2025.[34] Tajikistan's own series is suppressed and no series exists at all for Georgia or Turkmenistan;[34] FAO's SOFI 2026 report, as reported in the Tajik press, puts the Tajik 2024 figure at about 24 per cent.[35] The two Central Asian members without published country values can nonetheless be bounded from that aggregate. It carries 9.4 million people unable to afford a healthy diet in 2025, of whom 4.6 million sit in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, leaving 4.8 million across Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, about 26.5 per cent of their combined population.[34] Adding Armenia and Azerbaijan at their published rates gives an eight-member regional share of 11.3 per cent covering 96.2 per cent of the population, with only Georgia unmeasured. That is the figure the pillar's score rests on. It is more likely an understatement than an overstatement, since Georgia is among the region's weakest on both food insecurity and protein self-sufficiency.[1][4]
The pillar sits in the upper part of that band because the outcome checks are strong and the price and access legs are not. Undernourishment stays below 2.5 per cent in five of eight members and reaches 8.0 per cent only in Tajikistan.[4] Child stunting is population-weighted at about 7.1 per cent, low-to-moderate on WHO bands, but reaches 13.1 per cent in Tajikistan and 11.0 in Kyrgyzstan.[4] Price stability is the weaker leg: the population-weighted standard deviation of the annual food-inflation averages across 2021-2025 is 4.7 percentage points, and the 2025 weighted average of 8.2 per cent sits well above a stable-price benchmark, Kazakhstan alone running at 14.3 per cent in 2025.[36] Physical access is geographic rather than conflict-driven: seven of the eight are landlocked, Armenia's land borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan remain closed so its grain arrives through the weather-dependent Upper Lars crossing or, since late 2025, as transit consignments on the Azerbaijani and Georgian railways, Kyrgyz and Tajik mountains limit distribution, and Georgia's ports approach capacity with Anaklia funding cut from 150 to 50 million lari for 2026.[23][26][29] The World Bank's May 2026 update names import-dependent countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, alongside the Western Balkans, as the most exposed in its Europe and Central Asia region to Middle East price transmission, an exposure the volatility indicator already registers.[38] We apply no adjustment.
Shock endurance: 60
Quantitative score 56, adjusted up 4 points
Endurance rests on physical stocks and livestock rather than money. Regional wheat ending stocks of 5.59 million tonnes cover 20.3 per cent of consumption in MY2025/26, about 74 days, falling to 64 days on the MY2026/27 forecast, of which Kazakhstan holds 3.00 million tonnes.[8] The 70 million sheep and 31.5 million cattle are a living reserve, with the caveat that pasture is the first thing a drought removes.[7]
Financial depth is thin where it is needed most. GDP per capita ranges from USD 35,974 in Kazakhstan to USD 4,756 in Tajikistan, whose food import bill equals 53 per cent of merchandise exports and whose remittances equal 57.7 per cent of GDP.[4][20] Food insecurity already affects 27.9 per cent of Tajikistan's population and 25.7 per cent of Georgia's, and FAO publishes no figure for Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan, which hold 44 per cent of the region's people.[4] The 2022 episode showed how fast the Caucasus transmits a supplier shock, with Georgian bread prices up 36 per cent in June 2022 and flour up 41 per cent year on year that September.[27]
Crisis purchasing power is a genuine but uneven contributor. Foreign-exchange reserves cover a population-weighted 7.5 months of imports across the seven members for which data exist, comfortably above the conventional three-month import-cover benchmark, led by Uzbekistan's 10.3 months and Kazakhstan's 7.4, but Georgia and Armenia hold only about 3.0 and 3.4 months, close to that floor, and no reserve figure is published for Turkmenistan.[37] Central government debt is unremarkable where measured, from 20.9 per cent of GDP in Kazakhstan to 47.9 per cent in Armenia, though comparable data exist for only four of the eight members.[37] This component rests on reserves and debt rather than a demonstrated capacity to expand transfers quickly in a crisis.
We add 4 points for demonstrated substitution capacity. The region contains its own surplus supplier, and the rail links from Kazakhstan into Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan already carry two thirds of Kazakh wheat exports, so redirecting grain in a crisis is a policy decision rather than a logistics project.[11] Kazakhstan operates a state buyer, the Food Contracting Corporation, mandated to stabilise the domestic wheat and barley market and generally taking about 5 per cent of the crop, and members reach for trade instruments quickly: Armenia banned wheat and barley exports from 26 June 2025, extended to 6 July 2026, Azerbaijan holds an 18 per cent VAT exemption on wheat imports and sales to January 2027, and Georgia maintains VAT exemptions intended to stabilise prices.[11][16][17][18]
Trajectory
Three developments would change this picture. Uzbekistan has already lifted water-saving technology coverage of irrigated land from 4 to 50 per cent between 2020 and 2025 on USD 5.36 billion of combined state and foreign investment, its 2025-2028 follow-on programme targets a further 1.4 million hectares, and it is trialling upland rice methods that cut consumption by up to 40 per cent, the largest improvement available to regional headroom.[22][41] Second, Caucasus diversification has begun: Georgian wheat production rose 46 per cent from a very low base between 2019 and 2023, to 147,000 tonnes, Armenia has since late 2025 taken Russian and Kazakh wheat by rail through Azerbaijan and Georgia in consignments of roughly 1,000 tonnes, and Kazakh flour reached the United States via the Trans-Caspian corridor in March 2026 in a shipment of 24 tonnes, all routes rather than volumes.[7][11][29] Third, KazProtein's plant will convert 250,000 tonnes of wheat and 80,000 tonnes of peas a year into starch and pea protein isolate, the first sign of the region making protein products rather than exporting raw grain.[11]
The near-term direction is negative. Kazakhstan's wheat crop falls by more than a fifth in MY2026/27, USDA's April forecast being 14.0 million tonnes and its July database 15.0 million, the Kazakh Grain Union has cut its feed flour export estimate for China from 3.0 to 2.0 million tonnes, and the 2026 irrigation season opened with both major rivers below norm.[8][11][21][22] The region will still eat. Its exposure is that the margin now rests on one country's rainfall and one river's remaining flow.
Country notes
Kazakhstan. The mainstay: 86 per cent protein self-sufficiency, 19.33 million tonnes of wheat and 11.5 million tonnes of exports in MY2025/26, 1.459 hectares of arable land per person and the region's only documented state market buyer.[1][8][11][20] Its weaknesses are agronomic, with 2.3 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare and soil fertility down 17 per cent in twenty years, and it imports a third of its chicken.[6][10][11]
Uzbekistan. The demographic and livestock centre and the fertiliser engine: 37.1 million people, 14.1 million cattle, 11.9 million tonnes of milk and 1.08 million tonnes of nitrogen output.[6][7][20] Also the largest vulnerability, at 123 per cent water stress, with a wheat import requirement of 4.2 million tonnes for 2026/27 met chiefly from Kazakhstan.[5][13]
Turkmenistan. The most water-exposed state assessed here: 135 per cent water stress, 194 cubic metres of renewable internal freshwater per person, and an irrigation system fed by the Karakum Canal immediately downstream of the Qosh Tepa offtake.[5][20][22] Gas funds 761,000 tonnes of nitrogen output, and statistical opacity is the region's deepest, FAO's country brief being unchanged since October 2020.[6][19]
Kyrgyzstan. Water-rich upstream at 7,015 cubic metres per person and food-deficit downstream: on FAO's Low-Income Food-Deficit list, with wheat imports covering roughly half of food and milling demand, poultry self-sufficiency of 33 per cent, no domestic fertiliser, and 810,000 tonnes of maize and 5.6 million sheep to its credit.[1][6][7][8][15][20]
Tajikistan. The weakest member throughout: the region's lowest protein supply at 83.1 grams per person per day; wheat imports covering more than half of cereal consumption needs; food insecurity of 27.9 per cent; and remittances at 57.7 per cent of GDP, which pay for its food and expose it to a Russian labour-market shock.[2][3][4][14][20]
Georgia. The only member with sea access and the lowest protein self-sufficiency, at 44.9 per cent, with wheat self-sufficiency near 23 per cent, 550,000 tonnes imported and Russia supplying 99.5 per cent of wheat and 96.4 per cent of flour in 2024.[1][16][27][31] Water is abundant and land is not, at 0.082 hectares of arable per person; food insecurity of 25.7 per cent is the second highest here, and it lands the region's only significant marine catch, 213,600 tonnes in 2023, of which only 79,300 tonnes is Black Sea and Mediterranean fish and 134,300 tonnes is taken by a distant-water fleet in the Eastern Central Atlantic.[4][5][20][32]
Armenia. The most supplier-concentrated food system here: Russia supplied all of its 2024 wheat imports on FAOSTAT data and, on Armenian customs data for 2025, 99 per cent of wheat, 99 per cent of cooking oil and about 80 per cent of gas, against wheat self-sufficiency of 23.2 per cent in 2022.[1][4][26][31] With the Turkish and Azerbaijani borders closed, grain arrives via the weather-dependent Upper Lars crossing or by rail through Azerbaijan and Georgia; it makes no fertiliser and banned wheat and barley exports from June 2025 to July 2026.[6][17][29]
Azerbaijan. A middling importer with fiscal cover: 1.9 million tonnes of wheat against 3.3 million consumed and a cereal import dependency ratio of 34 per cent, offset by a food import bill of 7 per cent of merchandise exports and a VAT exemption on wheat to January 2027.[4][8][18] It is the region's largest soybean meal importer on USDA PSD data, at 180,000 tonnes, three quarters of it Argentine, and exports all its nitrogen output, against 57.5 per cent water stress, a Caspian catch of 63,000 tonnes on a falling sea, and food insecurity of 16.6 per cent.[5][6][9][23][31][32]