“The fundamental problem for Georgian security is that Russia holds all the major cards and no one is reshuffling the deck in Georgia’s favor”, writes Neil MacFarlane in his 2016 article on Georgia’s security situation. Georgia has a mighty neighbor that is not democratic, does not respect the right of self-determination of nations, and, most importantly, actually brings its military power to bear whenever Russian (legitimate or illegitimate) interests are not sufficiently honored.

Every winter, one of the most actively discussed issues of energy policy – both on TV and in professional circles - is natural gas. Prices and supply conditions are frequently part of the political debate. The main reason behind such active discussion is energy security concerns. What is energy security?

On June 15-16th, Oxfam organized and hosted the International Conference on Food Security and Nutrition in Tbilisi. ISET President Eric Livny was a panel member for the session on Food Security (FS) monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and discussed the major findings of a research piece entitled “Assessing Food Security Data Relevance and Collection Mechanisms in the South Caucasus” conducted by APRC at the end of 2015.

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).