The particular importance of agriculture in Ukraine is so strong that it has been suggested by some that it is reflected in the country's flag; the golden yellow field of wheat sits beneath a blue sky, said to be a common sight in rural Ukraine.

The relevance of agriculture in formal employment dropped in many European, Central, and East Asian countries over the previous decades. The mutually reinforcing and interdependent processes of development outside the agricultural sector, along with significant urbanization, have resulted in new dynamics and diversity in the rural labor landscape. Remittances, as the link between urban and international migrants and their original households, have gained importance in sustaining rural livelihoods, especially in poorer countries and regions.

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.

On June 15, 2016, ISET held a press conference to discuss recent economic indicators of Georgia. In the second quarter of 2016, the two most important economic barometers of consumer and business sentiment in Georgia – the Business Confidence Index (BCI) and the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) continued to steadily improve.

Between June 9-10, Mr. Labadze attended the 4th Asia Think Tank Summit in Seoul, an event jointly organized by the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy (KNDA), the Korea Development Institute (KDI), the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), the Civil Society Program (TTCSP) of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Asia Development Bank Institute (ADBI).