Georgian agricultural development has received significant attention lately, and it remains one of the most pressing issues facing the country. Yet proper development comes only as a result of comprehensive understanding, and so a study by UNDP Georgia, Swiss Cooperate South Caucasus, and the Ministry of Agriculture, in partnership with ISET and ACT, a research company, entitled 'What are the knowledge needs of Georgian farmers?' was initiated.
Having experienced a temporary 1% spike in August, food prices are going down again. In the second week of September, ISET’s Retail Food Price Index dropped 0.7% m/m (compared to August 2016) and 2% y/y (compared to September 2015).
The economic significance of bees extends far beyond honey production. As the National Resource Defense Council writes in 2011 (“Why We Need Bees: Nature’s Tiny Workers Put Food on Our Tables”), the value of the honey that bees produced in the US in that year amounted to 150 million dollars, while the value of the harvested crops that were pollinated by bees was 15 billion dollars, i.e., greater by a factor of 100! Having bees around is not primarily beneficial for the beekeepers, but even more for anyone else who grows crops, fruits, or vegetables.
On Wednesday, September 7, ISET hosted Dr. Jon Hanf, Head of the Wine Economics Program at Geisenheim University, Germany, who spoke about the prospects of Georgian wine in the highly competitive German market.
ISET’s Pati Mamardashvili and her co-authors Grigorios Emvalomatis (University of Dundee) and Pierrick Jan (Agroscope, Switzerland) have recently published their research in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (JARE). The JARE is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes creative and scholarly economic studies in the fields of agriculture, natural resources, and other related areas.