On June 3 2016, a Round Table Discussion of Tea Cooperatives was held in Kutaisi. This was the third event in a series of dialogues about agriculture and rural development in Georgia organized by ISET Policy Institute (ISET-PI) in partnership with CARE International, the Regional Development Association and the Georgian Farmers Association, with support from the European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD).

This policy brief available only in Georgian.

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.

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.

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).