BNE (Aug. 21, 2012) | A severe drought will slash Kazakhstan’s 2012 grain harvest to around half the record 26.9m tonnes gathered in 2011, slashing agricultural revenues at a time when the economy is already anticipating a hit from the global economic downturn. The news is especially worrying for the smaller Central Asian republics, which rely on Kazakh grain imports and have already seen an increase in food prices.