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Library Agricultural Recovery and Individual Land Tenure: Lessons from Central Asia

Agricultural Recovery and Individual Land Tenure: Lessons from Central Asia

Agricultural Recovery and Individual Land Tenure: Lessons from Central Asia

Resource information

Date of publication
December 1969
Resource Language
ISBN / Resource ID
678355
Pages

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 share 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.

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