Uzbekistan plans to fully mechanize cotton harvesting in 2027, ending manual picking altogether. The Minister of Agriculture Ibrokhim Abdurakhmonov said.

According to the minister, the country harvested more than 5 million tonnes of raw cotton in 2026, worth a total of 34 trillion sums. In the previous year, the harvest amounted to approximately 4 million tonnes.

Starting next year, cotton is expected to be harvested exclusively by machines.

In Uzbekistan, cotton fields inaccessible to harvesting machinery cover approximately 53,000 hectares. These areas are to be gradually taken out of cotton production and used for growing vegetables and other food crops.

Cotton-picking machinery is also manufactured domestically.

Ibrokhim Abdurakhmonov said the ministry had not issued any instructions this year to force people to participate in cotton harvesting.

«If members of a farmer’s family took part in the harvesting of their own accord, that is a different matter,» he noted.

Manual picking was permitted only on 11-meter-wide technological strips designated for harvesting machinery to turn around.

Uzbek authorities have announced plans to mechanize cotton harvesting on several occasions in the past. As early as 2013, the government pledged to increase mechanization to 80–90 percent by 2016.

According to the World Bank, between 2.2 million and 3 million people took part in Uzbekistan’s 2014 cotton harvest. In a study published in 2016, its authors noted that mechanization would reduce the need for mass labor mobilization but could also deprive rural residents of an important source of seasonal income.

In 2021, the international Cotton Campaign coalition lifted its boycott of Uzbek cotton, which had been introduced in 2011 over the systematic use of forced labor.