The objective of the assistance program is the promotion of agro-technical activities (plowing) for cultivating annual crops and supplying the industrial inputs (fertilizers and/or seeds and/or plant protection products); and the promotion of the activities of those land-poor-farmers who only have perennial crops on their lands (the provision of fertilizers and/or plant protection products).

Currently, farming in Georgia is a “by default activity” – the vast majority of Georgian “farmers” are not really farmers in a professional sense but rather people who try to survive by growing agricultural products. When traveling through Georgia’s countryside, one sees immediately that it is mainly the older generation which has to resort to this default activity.

In February, the average cost of cooking one standard Imeretian Khachapuri fell to 3.29GEL, which is 3.4% lower month-on-month (compared to January 2015), and 4.8% lower year-on-year (compared to February 2014).

In order to assess the effectiveness of the Agricultural Card Program, APRC conducted focus group discussions with farmers and individual interviews with input suppliers and machinery service providers from different regions of Georgia were conducted in order to assess the impact.

During the last three months, the Agricultural Policy Research Center (APRC) of ISET-PI was working on a study about family farming in Georgia. Within this project, we conducted interviews with farmers and owners of agribusinesses. These interviews elicited many intriguing facets of Georgian agriculture, but one aspect I found particularly interesting was that Georgian farmers apparently have a rather negative view on agricultural jobs.