For many people in developing countries, farming is the foundation on which their lives depend. For two young men from eastern Uzbekistan, learning better ways to grow fruit invigorated their farms and, in one case, settled a friendly sibling rivalry.

Tursunali Jorayev’s small vineyard was under-performing, so in 2008 he volunteered for a program through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded AgLinks project, which presented to local farmers a technique using trellises. Mr. Jorayev, a 27-year-old father of three, jumped at the chance to improve his livelihood.

Under the program, AgLinks offered a cost-share arrangement to farmers who established trellises on one hectare of their land. Mr. Jorayev paid for the labor, food, and installation during construction, while AgLinks funded the cement, wire, and transport. 

Trellised grapes have advantages over “bush” grapes grown on the ground: their leaves receive more sunlight and air, resulting in greater clusters and fewer rotten grapes and diseases, all of which increase yield. By using trellises, Mr. Jorayev’s vineyard, located in Pop District, Namangan Province, prospered from 2008 to 2009. His yield increased from 3.5 to 8.0 tons, and his income more than tripled from 600,000 to 2.1 million Uzbek soums (US$1,424). Through local dealers he exported 350 kilograms of the “Toyfi” variety to Russia for the first time.

Mr. Jorayev plans to invest in his vineyard, procure new grape varieties, and install trellises on his remaining two hectares. Mr. Jorayev noted the importance of the training programs, as training has been scarce since the former Soviet Union’s collective farm period.

“It is important to have training like the grape best practices, which was very interesting and useful for everybody here,” Mr. Jorayev said. “We learned a lot of useful things—proper watering, fertilizer application, pruning techniques, canopy management.”

Elsewhere in the Ferghana Valley, in the Quvasoy District, Odiljon Rakhimberdiev and his younger brother, Emin, were competing to see who could produce the most fruit.

Odiljon and his four brothers farm 70 hectares as members of the Quvasoy Bekhizor agrifirm. In the competition, Emin, an experienced fruit tree grower, was certain he would win because Odiljon was more experienced in growing wheat and cotton. But Odiljon had a strategy to prove his younger brother wrong.

AgLinks offered interested farmers the chance to host trainings in their orchards in return for technical assistance and equipment, so Odiljon volunteered 0.8 of his 3.5 hectares of fruit trees—mostly plum and peach—for the demonstration.

The pruning training in February 2009 was based on the University of California-Davis techniques for plum and peach trees. These were identified, procured, and adapted to the Uzbek language by USAID, including manuals and demonstration films. Twenty-three people, including Odiljon, attended the two-day, hands-on training that covered orchard establishment, pruning, thinning, and frost control. 

The impact was realized during the summer harvest—Odiljon sold 3 tons of peaches from his 0.8 hectare orchard versus the 0.6 tons sold by his younger brother from his 4-hectare orchard. Russian buyers came to Odiljon’s orchard to purchase his 3-ton crop for 1.65 million Uzbek soum (US$1,120), so he didn’t bear the cost of taking his crop to market.

“The crop is very attractive when it is ready to pick, and customers like it because they can see the quality of the fruit immediately,” Odiljon said. “I regret I didn’t prune more trees, but I will certainly do more next year.”

Odiljon has replicated the pruning system with five neighbors on a total of six hectares with similarly impressive results. He has since trained all his orchard workers on the new approach and intends to implement it on his entire orchard of three-year-old trees.