The objective of the assistance program is the promotion of agro-technical activities (plowing) for cultivating annual crops and supplying the industrial inputs (fertilizers and/or seeds and/or plant protection products); and the promotion of the activities of those land-poor-farmers who only have perennial crops on their lands (the provision of fertilizers and/or plant protection products).

Some twenty five year later, the world is once again rife with “contradictions” (the elimination of which is key to understanding Fukuyama’s end-of-history Hegelian thinking). These contradictions are most evident in the ever intensifying migration debates in Europe and the US, renewed trade wars, geopolitical rivalries and religious conflicts.

While Georgia never faced anything like a wartime food crisis, the agricultural policies implemented by the Georgian Dream coalition government in 2013-2015 did not lack in ambition, seeking to make up for more than a decade of “active neglect” of Georgia’s smallholder agriculture by the Saakashvili administration. In this piece, we take a critical look at one of the first government initiatives, the Agricultural Card Program, introduced in February 2013.

In order to assess the effectiveness of the Agricultural Card Program, APRC conducted focus group discussions with farmers and individual interviews with input suppliers and machinery service providers from different regions of Georgia were conducted in order to assess the impact.

Until 2012, Georgia has been encouraging foreigners to purchase land, bring modern technology and management to the country’s ailing agricultural sector. On the one hand, Georgia’s extremely liberal approach was a boon for investment by global food industry giants such as Ferrero (4,000ha hazelnut plantation in Samegrelo) and Hipps (growing of organic apple and production of aroma and apple concentrate in Shida Kartli).