Kazakh farmers have voiced their opposition to the country’s new ecological legislation that imposes taxation on livestock manure, which has been declared an environmentally harmful substance, local television channel 31 said.
All livestock is currently being registered at the expense of the owners for manure taxation purposes, the channel said on Tuesday.
“We’d prefer if the state encouraged people to take up animal husbandry, rearing livestock for meat and milk,” farmer Viktor Khilchenko was cited as saying.
The annual payment will be moderate, costing under 1,600 tenge ($11) per ton of manure, a local official told the channel. The new Environmental Code, which came into force earlier this year, treats manure as a waste product and not a fertilizer.
Local rights groups will campaign to have the law overturned, the report said.
This is not the first attempt by Kazakhstan to tax manure. In 2003, authorities in the eastern part of the country unsuccessfully tried to impose a similar law, saying it will prevent local settlements from being clogged with livestock byproducts.
