Illustrative photo, Fergana.agency
Uzbekistan had harvested 3.4 million tonnes of raw cotton as of October 12, 2026, the Ministry of Agriculture said on its official Telegram channel. That is 76% of the contracted target for this year's crop, which has been set at 4.5 million tonnes for clusters and farmers.
According to the ministry, cotton-picking machines brought in about 2.6 million tonnes, or 75% of the total. Workers picked 848,000 tonnes by hand.
Of the hand-picked volume, 174,000 tonnes came from field edges, which must be cleared manually so that harvesters can turn around. Another 674,000 tonnes was picked by workers of farms and agricultural clusters on small plots that machinery cannot access. The ministry said it plans to consolidate these plots in the future.
Nearly 3,000 high-capacity cotton harvesters have been deployed this season, and all of them are now working in the fields. More than 1,000 new machines were supplied to farms and agricultural clusters this year through leasing.
The pace remains high: on October 12, harvesters collected 147,000 tonnes of raw cotton, averaging about 50 tonnes per machine per day. The ministry stressed that timely harvesting matters not only for farmers' incomes but also for the proper storage and processing of the raw material.
In recent years, Uzbekistan's raw cotton harvest has stayed in the range of 3–4 million tonnes: 3.082 million tonnes in 2020, 3.51 million tonnes in 2023, and 3.986 million tonnes in 2025 from an area of 875,600 hectares.
