Irrigation systems for agriculture main buyer country

When they talk aboutbuyer's main country, for some reason everyone immediately imagines standard schemes - they say, here is the market, here is the climate, select equipment according to the parameters. But in fact, the key point that beginners miss is not so much agrotechnical standards, but how local farmers have been accustomed to working with water for decades. In Uzbekistan, for example, many farms are still convinced that drip irrigation is “insufficient watering”, and they have to literally explain that saving water does not equal a decrease in yield.

Why don't all irrigation systems work the same, even within the same country?

Let’s take Kazakhstan for example: in the northern regions, farmers often focus on grain crops, and frost resistance for pipelines is most important there. And in the south, where cotton and vegetables are grown, the accuracy of fertilizer dosage through the same drip tape is already critical. We once delivered a batch of systems designed for large farms, but did not take into account that local engineers were accustomed to the simplest valves - as a result, half of the automation was idle because no one wanted to deal with the controllers.

By the way, about automation - it often seems that the more complex, the better. But in Tajikistan, where power outages have become the norm, even the most advanced system without backup power turns into a pile of plastic. We had to redo the project on site, adding low-power wind generators. This is the case when theory breaks down against reality.

But in Azerbaijan they encountered the opposite - small farmers willingly took the simplest drip lines, but refused filters, considering them “an extra waste”. After a season, the droppers became clogged with silt, and we had to urgently organize on-site cleaning seminars. Now we always include mandatory service training in contracts.

How to select equipment for the specifics of CIS countries

If we talk aboutirrigation systemsfor Central Asia, the Soviet school of land reclamation is still strong there. Local agronomists are suspicious of thin drip tapes - they say our soils are heavy and they will tear them. We have to bring samples with reinforced walls and conduct field tests directly in their fields. By the way, this is exactly how we started working with Uzbek cotton growers - first we established a demo zone on 5 hectares, and only when we saw an increase in yield by 23% did serious orders begin to flow.

The issue of water treatment stands apart. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, there are many mountain rivers with suspended matter - standard mesh filters clog within a week. We had to develop hybrid solutions with gravel filters and a backwash function. By the way, it was this experience that later formed the basis of one of the projectsShandong Linyao Intelligent Agriculture Technology Co.,Ltd- now on https://www.lyzhihuinongye.ru you can see these systems in the section “Water filtration equipment?”.

Another nuance is that in some regions they still use open ditches for irrigation, and the transition to closed systems requires a recalculation of the entire water distribution. We once almost failed a project in Turkmenistan because we did not take into account seasonal fluctuations in water salinity - the salts literally corroded the emitters in two months.

Errors in logistics and equipment adaptation

I will never forget the case when we shipped a batch of controllers with an interface only in Chinese and English - in Uzbekistan, too, local engineers simply refused to work with them. I had to urgently make stickers with translations into Russian and Uzbek, and for the next batches I immediately had to localize the firmware. Now all devices fromShandong Linyao Intelligent Agriculture Technology Co.,LtdBy default they come with Russian language support.

There was also a story with spare parts - initially they thought that it would be enough to supply a basic set. But in Kazakhstan, where the distances between farms are huge, downtime due to a broken valve could last for weeks. Now we have created a network of service centers in Astana, Almaty and Shymkent - this has sharply increased customer confidence.

Climate testing is a separate topic. For example, for Mongolia it was necessary to completely revise the parameters of ultraviolet resistance - ordinary polyethylene degraded over the course of a season. Now we use formulations with the addition of HALS stabilizers, although this increases the cost of the system by 7-8%.

Designing for specific crops - what is not in textbooks

The rule that applies to cotton in Uzbekistan is “the more often, the better?” - but this is a misconception. We have found out in practice that with drip irrigation the intervals must be increased, otherwise fungal root rot will develop. Moreover, local agronomists initially resisted until they conducted parallel experiments in two areas.

It’s a different story with vineyards in Azerbaijan - watering in small doses in the root collar zone is critical there. Standard droppers with a flow rate of 1.8 l/h were not suitable; droppers with an adjustable flow rate of 0.5-1.2 l/h had to be developed. By the way, this particular solution is now included in the standard equipment for winegrowing farms from our company.

But with walnut orchards in Kyrgyzstan, we had to completely change the approach to zoning - it turned out that mature trees do not require circular watering, but targeted nutrition in the zone of active roots. We made a system with remote emitters - the efficiency of water use increased by 40%.

What really influences the choice of buyers from different countries

Price is an important, but not the determining factor. In Kazakhstan, for example, they are ready to pay more for systems that can be gradually modernized. For example, start with a simple drip line, then add automation, then humidity sensors. That's why we're inShandong Linyao Intelligent Agriculture Technology Co.,LtdWe initially incorporate a modular principle into projectsintegration of water and fertilizers.

Service support was the key to entering the Uzbekistan market. Local farmers appreciate it when an engineer arrives within 48 hours rather than a week later. We had to hire and train local teams - now we have 12 service points throughout the country.

Documentation seems like a small thing. But when we translated the instructions into Uzbek (taking into account local terminology), the number of calls to the support service decreased by 60%. This is now standard practice for everyonebuyer's main country.

Prospects and dead ends

Full automation is beautiful in presentations, but in practice it turned out to be unclaimed in Tajikistan. Farmers prefer semi-automatic modes with manual control. We are now developing hybrid solutions where you can combine irrigation scenarios.

Solar pumps would seem ideal for regions with a lot of sunny days. But in reality, efficiency dropped by 30% due to dust storms, and cleaning the panels became a separate expense item. We had to develop systems with automatic cleaning - an expensive solution, but for large farms it pays for itself in 2-3 seasons.

Remote control via mobile apps worked unexpectedly well here. Even in remote areas of Uzbekistan there is a stable 3G signal, and farmers willingly control irrigation from smartphones. We are now actively developing this area, especially for projectssmart agricultural parks.