CHANGES IN AGRICULTURAL MARKETS IN TRANSITION ECONOMIES

William Liefert () and Johan Swinnen

No 33945, Agricultural Economic Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: Economic reform in the transition economies of the former Soviet bloc has transformed the volume and mix of these economies' agricultural production, consumption, and trade. Output drops in most countries have ranged from 25 to 50 percent. The livestock sector has been hit particularly hard, all but eliminating U.S. grain exports to the region. This report concludes that the output decline has been an inevitable part of market reform and that the main goal of agricultural policy in the transition economies should not be to return output to pre-reform levels but to increase the productivity of input use. Although reform has created a food security problem in some countries, the cause of the problem is not insufficient food supplies, but rather inadequate access to food by segments of the population and regions within countries.

Keywords: International; Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32
Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/33945/files/ae020806.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uerser:33945

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.33945

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Agricultural Economic Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().