The Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement between Georgia and the EU, brought into effect in 2014, was hailed at the time by many as being of great importance to Georgian manufacturers and food/beverage producers. Yet, skeptics commented that 1) Georgia had already had more than 7000 articles duty-free and quota-free under the pre-existing GSP+ trade terms granted by the EU for many years, and 2) very few exporters had been able to take advantage of these concessions.

Unless its glorious past during the Soviet Union, the Georgian tea sector rebounded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, yet only partially as the economic and political stability of the post-independence period left a mark on the overall productivity of the sector.

Between August 2014 and May 2015, international wheat prices declined by 18%, rice prices dropped by 14% and maize prices declined by 6% (World Bank, 2015). This decreased prices are expected to be transmitted from international to domestic consumer prices of food items (e.g., wheat flour, bread). However, there are many factors that hinder this transmission process.

An average Georgian household spends more than 40% of its budget on food. Food prices are important determinants of access to food and stability of food security. In order to assess the stability of prices the paper looks at food price volatility for major commodities (not restricted to primary commodities only) consumed by Georgian households. Price volatility is important because both low and high prices affect different stakeholder groups (producers, consumers, exporters etc.) in different ways.

Agricultural input subsidy programs are meant to increase crop production, contributing in this way to improved food security and rise of incomes of stallholder farmers. An important goal of such programs is to develop efficient input supply systems, improving farmers’ access to inputs and adoption of new technologies (e.g., use of new seed varieties, fertilizers, and pesticides).