Azerbaijan has allocated AZN5bn ($2.94bn) to a five-year state programme aimed at overhauling its agricultural sector, with public and private financing split roughly evenly and a set of structural reforms targeting higher-value output, expanded irrigation and improved land use, officials and experts said at a parliamentary hearing this week, according to an agriculture ministry statement.

The 2026–2030 State Programme for the Development of Production and Processing in Agriculture, Fisheries and Aquaculture sets a target of increasing value added in the sector by 10% by 2030 compared with 2025, according to Bagish Ahmadov, adviser to the executive director of the Centre for Economic Reforms Analysis and Communication. The growth is expected to be driven primarily by exports, with agricultural, fisheries and processing exports projected to rise 33.8% over the same period, he told a public discussion organised by agri-sector NGOs.

Of the total AZN5bn envelope, AZN2bn will come from the state and AZN3bn is to be mobilised from the private sector, according to Rizvan Nabiyev, a member of parliament and of the NGO Agency's Supervisory Board. "Public-private partnership mechanisms come to the fore again in this context," he said. "The opinions and proposals of experienced sector experts must also be taken into account."

Agriculture Minister Majnun Mammadov, speaking at a separate public hearing before parliament's Agrarian Policy Committee, identified a structural imbalance at the heart of the programme's rationale: grain and fodder crops occupy 74% of Azerbaijan's cultivated area but account for only 11% of agricultural output by value. "We have allocated more of our land resources to products that create less value," he said, drawing a comparison with the Netherlands and Israel, which import grain and fodder precisely because limited land drives them towards higher-value crops. Mammadov acknowledged that grain production carries strategic importance for Azerbaijan's food security and cannot be abandoned, but said the primary objective was to raise yields rather than expand acreage. "We must get more output from one plot with fewer resources," he said. "This is the core transformation the state programme aims to achieve."

A significant share of the programme's investments is directed at irrigation infrastructure, which officials described as a precondition for all other productivity gains. Ilham Bayramov, deputy chairman of the State Water Resources Agency, told the parliamentary hearing that plans for this year include the irrigation of more than 1.5mn hectares and the delivery of 6.8 billion cubic metres (bcm) of water. The flagship infrastructure project under the programme is the Shirvan irrigation canal, a 204.3-kilometre structure that will serve approximately 228,000 hectares: improving water supply to 112,000 existing hectares and bringing 106,000 new hectares into cultivation.

Mammadov linked the irrigation agenda directly to the land consolidation component of the programme, describing consolidation primarily as a project to supply smallholder share-land plots with enclosed irrigation networks. Azerbaijan has studied land consolidation models from Turkey, Israel and several European countries, he said. The critical problem is water loss during flood irrigation: without piped supply to the plot level, farmers cannot receive the precise water volumes their crops require and losses increase. Bayramov added that work is currently under way to integrate geodata on land parcels, irrigation canals and collector-drainage networks into a unified digital system, with real-time monitoring tools and electronic accounting systems being rolled out in coordination with the Agriculture Ministry.

The programme targets an expansion of irrigated agricultural land to 300,000 hectares, parliament's Natural Resources, Energy and Ecology Committee chairman Sadiq Gurbanov noted — more than double the current level. He cited Israel's drip-irrigation system as proof that resource management quality matters as much as resource volume, and pointed to Norway and Vietnam as models for the aquaculture component of the programme. Azerbaijan's access to the Caspian Sea, its reservoirs and favourable natural conditions create significant untapped potential in fisheries and aquaculture, a sector that Gurbanov described as among the fastest-growing globally, citing UN Food and Agriculture Organisation data.

The programme also targets the restoration of 480,000 hectares of pasture and grazing land to improve fodder supply, according to Rashad Huseynov, director of the Agrarian Research Centre under the Agriculture Ministry. New subsidy mechanisms planned under the livestock component include payments for cattle slaughtered at abattoirs, subsidies for milk processed industrially, and — described as new for Azerbaijan — subsidies for wool and hides.

Sahil Guliyev, a lecturer at the Azerbaijan–Italy University's Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, flagged value-added processing as an area of unrealised potential. Azerbaijan ranks among the world's leading producers of pomegranates, he noted, yet exports the fruit primarily in fresh form rather than as processed products, which would command significantly higher prices. He also warned that crop losses from pests and diseases can reach 40–50%, arguing for systematic scientific study of variety resistance and for closer integration of research, education and production. Soil salinisation in Azerbaijan's Aran lowland region remains a persistent structural problem, he added, though expanded scientific work could return portions of affected land to agricultural use and create new employment.

On the regulatory side, Mammadov outlined a package of legislative reforms to accompany the investment programme: a new framework agriculture law to consolidate sector definitions, state support mechanisms and modern concepts including climate adaptation and sustainable production; an updated fisheries law to replace legislation dating from 1998, with digital registration and strengthened oversight against illegal fishing; a revised seed law aligned with international standards; and a new warehouse receipts law to allow stored agricultural commodities to serve as collateral, with the aim of improving farmers' access to working capital and deepening their links with financial markets.