The Agricultural Transition in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former U.S.S.R.

Book excerpt: Central and Eastern European countries and the states of the former USSR have embarked on an exhilarating but difficult political and economic transition. Changes in agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR will profoundly affect the individual countries and the region, and alter the world agricultural economy in the twenty-first century. Despite many differences, these countries face a core of common issues as they design and implement agrarian reform. Most of the papers prepared for the 1990 World Bank - National Bank of Hungary conference on the agricultural transition in Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR are presented herein. They provide a rich set of references for understanding the problems of agricultural transition in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and for evaluating alternative paths open to the governments in the region. The unifying theme of this book is the common dilemmas and options of agricultural transformation in countries that differ in size, resource endowment, level of development, extent of market imperfections, and political conditions.