Chu Valley
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| Chu Valley | |
|---|---|
| Shu Valley, Chüy Valley, Chui Valley | |
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan |
| Province/State | Jambyl Region, Chüy Region |
| Coordinates | 43.60, 73.76 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 116,000 km² |
| Terrain | Desert and semi-desert pasture, sands and river terraces of the Chu (Shu) valley; approximately seven districts of Jambyl Region (Bayzak, Jambyl, Merki, Moyynkum, Qorday, Shu and Turar Ryskulov) with Chüy Region |
| Climate | |
| Climate Type | Arid |
| Seasons | Cannabis comes up from mid-April and flowers from June to September |
| Growing history | |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Chu Valley (also Shu Valley or Chüy Valley) is a cannabis growing area in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in the valley of the Chu (Shu) river. The valley lies in Jambyl Region of Kazakhstan and Chüy Region of Kyrgyzstan.[1] Cannabis grows wild there over a large area, and people come to gather it for marijuana and hashish. In 2008 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) wrote that cannabis was thought to grow wild throughout southern Kazakhstan, the largest single location being the Chu valley. A UNODC mission to the valley in 2007 found wild growth and cultivation well above the 128,000 hectares officially reported, and more than half of the cannabis being harvested.[2]
Geography
The Kazakh news agency Kazinform describes the valley as spread over a vast territory between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Within Jambyl Region it places the valley on the lands of seven districts: Bayzak, Turar Ryskulov, Shu, Jambyl, Moyynkum, Merki and Qorday.[3] The newspaper Caravan named the same seven districts in 2007.[4]
On the Kazakh side the land is arid pasture. E. A. Badaev and M. D. Boltaev describe the vegetation of the Shu massif as grass and shrub, with groupings of wormwood and ephemerals and of wormwood and saltworts, mixing desert and meadow communities.[5] A reporter who went out with the police in May 2007 found little variety of plants, and was told that the cannabis did not grow near the road: those who gathered it had to travel several tens of kilometres to reach the thickets.[4] Specialists quoted by Kazinform in 2023 held that the area of cannabis in Jambyl Region was shrinking over the years, less because of eradication than because of a drier climate with less rain.[3]
The wild stands
Badaev and Boltaev put the area of the plant in the Shu (Chu) valley at more than 130,000 hectares. They call it Cannabis ruderalis, distinct from cultivated hemp in stable characters of form and biology. It prefers light sandy soils and forms dense patches on ground trampled by livestock, on old ploughland, by sheepfolds and wells, on wasteland and along riverbanks. In their route surveys most stands were patches of no more than 1.5 hectares, and heavy infestation, of 100 or more stems to the square metre, covered about 5,000 hectares, a tenth of the area surveyed. On slightly saline soils the plants reached 2.5 to 3 metres.[5]
The same authors give the plant's year in the arid zone. Seedlings come up from mid-April, once the soil warms to 8–10 °C. Male plants flower and female plants set seed from June to September; the seed begins to ripen and fall in mid-July, and most of it is shed in September and October. The growing season lasts 120 to 150 days on meadow-grey soils and 150 to 200 days on sand.[5] Kazinform describes the valley's grass turning yellow by August, when the cannabis thickets stand 1.5 to 2 metres high, and says that sheep and wild animals carry the seed.[3] Caravan wrote that it grows where sheepfolds stand.[4]
The UNODC's World Drug Report 2006 gave the wild cannabis of the Chui valley an unusually high THC content, up to 4 per cent.[6]: 166 K. N. Sarsenbaev and E. S. Boribay, who worked on medicinal extracts from the valley's plants, put the THC content of Shu cannabis usually at 2 to 8 per cent, and wrote that the valley holds a great number of populations with different combinations of cannabinoids.[7]
Neither Caravan nor Tengrinews claims to know when cannabis first grew in the valley. Press accounts repeat a story that a Russian governor, Gerasim Kolpakovsky, sowed hemp to hold back the sands, and date it to the end of the 18th century (Caravan, 2007), the 17th century (Tengrinews, 2014) or the second half of the 19th century (Kazinform, 2023, quoting the historian Galiya Alimzhanova). Tengrinews adds that others believe it has grown there since ancient times.[4][1][3]
Area
Estimates of the area differ widely, and are given here by source.
- A topographic survey of 1989 found 138,000 hectares of wild cannabis in Jambyl Region: 85,700 in Merki district, 24,400 in Shu, 12,500 in Turar Ryskulov, 12,200 in Bayzak, 2,000 in Qorday and 1,000 in Moyynkum. The interior ministry was still using the figure in 2023.[3]
- The UNODC's surveys of 1998 and 1999 in Kyrgyzstan found 87.4 hectares of wild growth and cultivation in Chüy Region.[2]
- The World Drug Report 2006 wrote that as much as 400,000 hectares of cannabis grew wild in the Chui valley alone, with a potential output of 6,000 tons but an estimated harvest of only 500 tons.[6]: 166
- Caravan gave 130,000 hectares in 2007.[4]
- A regional report of the Dublin Group in 2012 put the largest location of wild-growing cannabis in Kazakhstan, 140,000 hectares, in the Chui valley, with a potential production of 5,000 to 6,000 tons of hashish a year.[8]: 2
- Zakon.kz gave more than 145,000 hectares in 2013 with scattered stands, holding about 24,000 tonnes of plant mass.[9]
- A new map of the stands, made in 2023 with aerial images, found 62,000 hectares. It showed the stands shifting out of Merki district, which lost 65,000 hectares, into Turar Ryskulov district, which gained 9,500.[10]
Harvest and trade
The people who gather the cannabis are called narkozagotoviteli (drug harvesters) in the Kazakh press. According to the head of the police unit for the valley in 2007, they work in the valley for weeks, reaching the stands on horseback or by car and on foot where a car cannot go. They gather marijuana in sacks to order, and leave the sacks in straw sheds at the koshary (sheepfolds) for a carrier, who loads them onto a lorry under onions or cabbages. From there the drug goes to the large cities of Kazakhstan and across the border to Russia.[4] In 2013 Zakon.kz reported that harvesters came every year from Almaty and its region, Taraz, Shymkent, North Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, some by train, since the railway runs through the valley. Freshly mown cannabis is dried, packed in sacks and buried until the season's police operation is over. A young man from Taraz detained that summer told the police he had gathered the plant to rub on his palms; the police said he could not have mown so much in less than a day.[9]
The Jambyl police described cannabis-group drugs, marijuana and hashish, as being taken from the Shu valley to the north of Kazakhstan and on to the border regions of Russia.[11] Sergei Golunov counted parts of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, especially the Chu (Shu) river valley, among the large suppliers of cannabis to Russia.[12]: 26 In 2013 the head of the anti-drug committee said that most of the roughly 30 tonnes of drugs seized in Kazakhstan each year were marijuana and hashish obtained in the valley.[9]
Sarsenbaev and Boribay mowed the valley's plants from July to September for their laboratory work, and give the yield of dense wild stands as about 10 to 35 centners a hectare. The resin "dust" from which they made one extract was gathered in the valley at the end of September.[7]
Control and plans for the crop
The valley's name entered Soviet law. The criminal code of the Kazakh SSR, in its wording of 1987, made it a crime to sow or grow "Indian, southern Manchurian, southern Chuy, southern Arkhon and southern Krasnodar" hemp.[13] Kazinform writes that the hemp of the valley was not used in Soviet industry because of its high content of psychotropic substances.[3]
The police hold a summer operation against the harvest each year, earlier called Mak (Poppy) and in recent years Karasora. The Mak-2007 operation opened with a briefing at the town of Shu on 25 May 2007, and a special police unit for the valley, Delta-Dolina, began work that year.[4] The police mow the stands and burn them. In 2025 they mowed 4,500 hectares in the zones bordering the sands and burned more than 3,000 tonnes of cannabis;[14] in July 2026 they destroyed 71 tonnes on 110 hectares in Shu district.[15] Both Caravan and Kazinform write that poisoning, mowing and burning have failed to clear the plant, whose roots reach seven metres.[4][3]
Badaev and Boltaev tested herbicides against the stands from 2006 to 2010 at the Sargau tract in Shu district, where most of the products tried killed more than 97 per cent of the plants. They found that burning or breaking the turf led to a sharp increase in cannabis the following year, and looked for wild forage plants that could take its place.[5] In 2014 a Kazakh plant-protection institute proposed to eradicate the valley's cannabis with herbicides and sow forage crops instead. In the same year the deputy Dariga Nazarbayeva proposed using it for medicine.[1]
Plans to process the plant have not come to anything. A foundation stone for a hemp-processing plant was laid in the southern industrial zone of the town of Shu in 2004; construction was postponed indefinitely in 2009. Since 2020 the region has discussed building a plant to process the valley's cannabis for medicine.[3]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
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See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Cannabis valley in Kazakhstan to be destroyed with herbicides". Tengrinews. 9 October 2014. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Regional Office for Central Asia (April 2008). Illicit drug trends in Central Asia (PDF) (Report). Paris Pact Initiative. p. 23.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Скрипник, Г. (29 August 2023). "Как в Казахстане появилась индийская конопля и что из нее можно сделать". Kazinform (in русский). Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 "ЧУдная долина". Caravan.kz (in русский). 30 May 2007. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Badaev, E.A.; Boltaev, M.D. (2013). "Каннабиноидная сорная конопля Шуской долины". Защита и карантин растений (in русский) (3): 32–34.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2006). World Drug Report 2006. Volume 1: Analysis (PDF) (Report). United Nations. ISBN 92-1-148214-3.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Sarsenbaev, K.N.; Boribay, E.S. (2014). "Современные методы получения медицинских препаратов из конопли". Вестник Казахского Национального медицинского университета (in русский) (4): 288–292.
- ↑ Council of the European Union (23 May 2012). Regional report on Central Asia (Report). Note from the Italian regional chair of the Dublin Group. Brussels. Doc. 10291/12, CORDROGUE 39, ASIE 54.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 "Полет в «чудную» долину (фото)". Zakon.kz (in русский). 15 August 2013. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ "В Чуйской долине вдвое уменьшилась площадь прорастания дикорастущей конопли". BES.media (in русский). Interfax-Kazakhstan. 28 May 2024. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ Скрипник, Г. (29 August 2020). "«Карасора-2020»: в Шуской долине сжигают заросли дикорастущей конопли". Kazinform (in русский). Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ Golunov, S. (2007). "Drug-trafficking through Russia's post-Soviet borders: problems, misperceptions, and countermeasures". Acta Slavica Iaponica. 24: 24–46. hdl:2115/39514.
- ↑ Уголовный кодекс Казахской ССР, 22 July 1959, arts. 212-1 and 213, as worded by the Ukaz of 30 July 1987.Kazakh SSR.Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ Тё, М. (21 August 2025). "Три тысячи тонн дикорастущей конопли". Kazakhstanskaya Pravda (in русский). Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ Поляков, А. (9 July 2026). "Более 70 тонн дикорастущей конопли ликвидировали в Жамбылской области". Kazinform (in русский). Retrieved 12 October 2026.