Uzbek farmers battle to save wheat crops from salinity problems

QARSHI, Uzbekistan -- On an unseasonably mild spring afternoon, second-generation farmer Diyor Juraev gathered a group of worried growers in a wheat field outside Qarshi, a city in southern Uzbekistan. They came looking for answers from a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) delegation to an existential problem for the country's farmers: After decades of poor irrigation in an arid ...