Csaba Csaki

Agriculture remains the main source of employment and livelihood for the large rural population of many transition countries, especially among the former Soviet republics. Accordingly, the World Bank continuously monitors the progress of land reform and farm restructuring in the region because of the potential impact of these processes on rural development and poverty alleviation in rural areas. The present study on Belarus is the latest addition to a long and growing series of World Bank publications on land reform and farm restructuring in the former socialist countries of Europe and Central Asia. The unique features of all these publications is their reliance on first-hand empirical information collected through extensive farm surveys of various rural constituencies. Analysis of survey findings enables the World Bank to base its policy dialogue with governments in the region on solid empirical facts, making the Bank's recommendations more credible and relevant. The survey findings in this volume will provide a platform for useful policy discussions with this country's government and supply international donors that are active there with essential information to design their strategic programs.

Originally published in 1993, this is a study of agricultural co-operatives. The farming structure in transition countries has shifted from dominance of large corporate farms to family smallholdings. Smallholders everywhere experience difficulties with access to market services, including sale of products, purchase of inputs, and acquisition of machinery; they suffer from credit shortages and have limited access to information and advisory services. The barriers to market access prevent smallholders from fully exploiting their inherent productivity advantages. Best-practice world experience highlights farmers' service cooperatives, created by grassroots users, as the most effective way of improving the market access of small farmers. Service cooperatives also help smallholders overcome market failures, when private business entrepreneurs are unwilling to provide services in areas that they judge unprofitable or unfairly exploit users through monopolistic practices. These difficulties and market failures are prominent in transition countries and scholars accordingly expected rapid development of agricultural service cooperatives in response to smallholder needs. The present volume explores gaps between expectations and reality.

Originally published in 1993, this is a study of agricultural co-operatives. The farming structure in transition countries has shifted from dominance of large corporate farms to family smallholdings. Smallholders everywhere experience difficulties with access to market services, including sale of products, purchase of inputs, and acquisition of machinery; they suffer from credit shortages and have limited access to information and advisory services. The barriers to market access prevent smallholders from fully exploiting their inherent productivity advantages. Best-practice world experience highlights farmers' service cooperatives, created by grassroots users, as the most effective way of improving the market access of small farmers. Service cooperatives also help smallholders overcome market failures, when private business entrepreneurs are unwilling to provide services in areas that they judge unprofitable or unfairly exploit users through monopolistic practices. These difficulties and market failures are prominent in transition countries and scholars accordingly expected rapid development of agricultural service cooperatives in response to smallholder needs. The present volume explores gaps between expectations and reality.

The world confronts major challenges in rural development as it enters the 21st century. Most of the world's poverty is in rural areas, and will remain so, yet there is a pro-urban bias in most countries' development strategies, and in their allocation of public investment funds. Rural people, and ethnic minorities, in particular, have little political clout to influence public policy to attract more public investment in rural areas. This document outlines a holistic and spatial approach that tackles some tough and long-ignored issues and also addresses old issues in new ways. The revised action-oriented strategy provides guidelines and focal points for enhancing the effectiveness of the World Bank's rural development efforts.

The Iron Curtain lifted in 1989, and more than twenty nations emerged from the isolation that had largely hidden them from the rest of the world for more than four decades. In each of these former Soviet States, remnants of tradition and economic organization has prevented them from stepping out, beyond the curtain and onto the world stage. Regardless, some have been extremely successful. In Agriculture in Transition: Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post Soviet Countries authors Zvi Lerman, Csaba Csaki, and Gershon Feder study the land policies and farming infastructures of these newly emerging nations as components of institutional change in the rural sector - change from a centralized rural economy to a market-oriented economy. Their analysis of the policy, tradition, history, and social structure of these developing states pushes the discussion of economic transition beyond questions policy, planning, and implementation.