Agricultural Recovery and Individual Land Tenure: Lessons from Central Asia

Lerman, Z., Sedik, D.;Regional Office for Europe

Agricultural Recovery and Individual Land Tenure: Lessons from Central Asia

Policy Studies on Rural Transition No. 2009-3

Year of publication 2009

Pages 18

Author Lerman, Z., Sedik, D.;Regional Office for Europe

Product type Book (stand-alone)

Edition 1

Full item page

Synopsis (short abstract) One of the striking features of transition from plan to market in CIS agriculture is the dramatic shift from the predominance of large corporate farms (kolkhozy and sovkhozy, generally referred to as agricultural enterprises) to individual or family agriculture based on a spectrum of small farms. The individual sector, combining the traditional household plots and the new peasant farms that began to emerge after 1992, accounts for most of agricultural production and controls a large sh are of arable land. This is a dramatic change from the pre- 1990 period, when agricultural enterprises produced over 70% of GAO and controlled over 90% of arable land. In this article we assemble evidence that, in our opinion, shows that individualization of agriculture is associated with the post-transition recovery in CIS and that small family farms outperform the large enterprises, at least by measures of land productivity. The evidence is presented here for the five countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Previously similar results have been obtained for the Trans- Caucasian states (Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan) and to a certain extent also for the European countries of the CIS.

Language English

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