ASTANA – Bananas are not a crop typically associated with Kazakhstan’s vast steppe, but in the country’s south, a greenhouse complex is proving otherwise. Central Asia’s only banana farm, located in the Turkistan Region near Shymkent, is cultivating tropical fruit on an industrial scale while drawing visitors eager to see how bananas grow far from their natural climate.
Photo credit: Nava_Banan’s Instagram page. Opened in June 2023 by GenGroup Qazaqstan, the plantation is located in Taskeshu village in the Sairam district, around 25 kilometers from Shymkent. The five-hectare greenhouse complex employs 15 residents from nearby villages and has become both an agricultural venture and a tourist destination.
In an interview with The Astana Times, Islam Aliyev, managing director of the plantation, said the idea for the project emerged after the company’s founder, Timur Uteshev, visited a banana plantation in Türkiye in 2022 and decided to launch a similar business in Kazakhstan.
The site was prepared in advance, with soil quality analyzed and the land enriched with manure before the first 8,400 seedlings were planted. “At the beginning, we planted 8,400 seedlings. Today there are more than 11,000 because the plants reproduce over time. In some places, we left two shoots from one plant, which increased the total number,” Aliyev said.
The farm cultivates the Turkish hybrid banana variety Anamur, developed for Türkiye’s climate. According to Aliyev, the greenhouse was designed to recreate similar growing conditions in southern Kazakhstan. “This is a hybrid variety created for the Turkish climate, and we reproduced those conditions here,” Aliyev said, noting that Ecuadorian bananas differ because they are grown in another climate zone.
More than 11,000 seedlings are now growing in the banana farm. Photo credit: GenGroup Qazaqstan The first seedlings were planted in June 2023, and the farm harvested its first crop nine months later. That initial harvest yielded 385 tons of bananas, followed by a second crop of 420 tons.
The third harvest is now underway, with around 120 tons collected so far, or roughly 30% of the expected total. Aliyev said demand has outpaced the farm’s current production capacity. For now, most of the bananas are sold in Shymkent, where wholesalers buy the produce directly from the farm.
“There are requests from Taraz, Almaty and Astana, but we do not yet have enough volume to send bananas there. Shymkent remains our main market, and even there we are covering only around 20% of demand,” he said.