One of the first things tourists in Georgia notice is how crazy that drive from the airport to the city is. Jumping red lights, breaking rules to take over the jeep in front, the Georgian taxi driver risks his (and not only his!) life to deliver his passenger to the destination. As a distraction from the dangerous ride, the driver might offer the famous “dzhigit” (a brave equestrian) joke: a dzhigit passes on the red light but stops on the green – in case another dzhigit is crossing the road.

On May 27-28, Along with APRC representatives and the ENPARD team at ISET Policy Institute, ISET students took part in a field trip to the western regions of Samegrelo, Guria, and Racha-Lechkhumi. They conducted interviews with cooperative members supported by ENPARD (European Neighborhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development), whose project is implemented by a CARE consortium in those regions, of which ISET is a participating member.

On May 25, APRC researcher Ia Katsia attended a working meeting organized by Geostat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food, and the Agriculture Organization. The aim of the meeting was to update the data on recent and pending changes in the Sample Survey of Agricultural Holdings and review the results of the 2014 Agricultural Census 2014.

Driven by fruits and vegetables, Georgian retail food prices are going down. In the first half of May, ISET’s Retail Food Price Index lost 2.9% y/y (compared to May 2015) and 1.8% m/m (compared to April 2016). The leaders in prices declines were cheese, greens, and coffee: down by 10.2%, 5.1%, and 2.7%, respectively.

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.