On October 28 and 29, CARE International in the Caucasus carried out its Direct Beneficiary Survey of ENPARD-funded cooperatives in the regions of Guria, Samegrelo, and Racha-Lechkhumi & Kvemo Svaneti.
The Republic of Georgia was among the fastest Former Soviet Union countries to implement large-scale land reform and land redistribution plans, starting in 1992. Land redistribution resulted in the formation of hundreds of thousands of small family farms, replacing large-scale collectives and production cooperatives (Sovkhozez and Kolkhozes). The main purpose of this land individualization process was, arguably, to help a large part of the population survive extremely hard times.
A question of causality: Does modernization of agriculture lead to economic growth or does growth induce a modernization of the agricultural sector? For many years, this question has been hotly debated among development economists. While those economists who believe in growth-led agriculture (GLA) were dominating until recently, now the proponents of agriculture-led growth (ALG) are afloat again. Which insights does this debate yield for Georgia?
ISET Policy Institute executive director Lasha Labadze attended the fourth annual ADB-Asian Think Tank Development Forum 2016 on October 27-28 in New Delhi, India, organized by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), and the Asian Development Bank.
ISET's prominence in the agricultural development sector has been displayed once again with the institute's participation in a meeting led by the Georgian Alliance on Agriculture and Rural Development (GAARD) on October 26 at Tbilisi's Courtyard Marriott hotel. Led by Oxfam, GAARD is one of four ENPARD implementing consortia.