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Tengiz Kavtaradze
SECTORALANDREGIONALPROBLEMSOF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF GEORGIA

Summary 

Reality shows that in Georgia, on the one hand, thoroughly destroyed (or still in progress) the previous system of the agricultural sector contributing services and, on the other hand, the slow is  pace of emergence or transformation of services contributing to development of farmers and other medium or large farm in the new reality. Many district agricultural departments fail to adapt to free market relations, fail to deliver their services, and are doomed to complete destruction. At the regional and district level, the old system remains today: Plant Protection Station, Seed Quality Inspection, Zoo-Veterinary Station, Biolaboratory, Artificial Seeding Station, Breed Test and Selection Station, Agricultural Product and Food Quality Inspectorate, Water Quality Inspection Division etc. Some of these services can be operated, but the scales are limited, some are virtually non-operational, some suffer from a lack of information. The coordination of these services is very unsatisfactory. All of the above shows that the Ministry of Agriculture and Food is not properly performing its function.

It is noteworthy that at the regional level it is possible to have intensive relations with producers of different scales, to identify needs and requirements, to mobilize local specialists and to provide information and consultation, to coordinate agricultural services. At the district level, the Department of Agriculture and Food should acquire information-consulting and technical services.

Development of Agriculture Sector problems often generate regional problems, long period of wind erosion and land depletion sharply reduced the productivity of the land of Dedoplistskaro in Shiraki, Zilicha, Large Shiraki grain producing regions much of the land is depleted due to the intensive usage. Grain yields dropped to 600 kg (200 kg of seed material). Large amounts of grain crop are lost in lands affected by hurricanes.

Similar to the generalization of US innovation knowledge systems experience to decide this problem, land use and conservation policies must be implemented in the Dedoplistskaro and other grain producing areas. The government should decide that farmers need encouragement and knowledge to make better use of the land. They should be provided with free assistance or cash assistance to improve the land. Like the Roosevelt administration, the government should provide farmers with loans, agricultural machinery, hybrid seeds and fertilizers, not just for purchase.

Rural farmers overwhelming majority holds one hectare of land for the land intensive use, owing to venture funding practices should be organized `tracks' farms, where will be studied, established and advised the farm staff and families to see which species, varieties and quantity of harvest, etc. is economically advantageous to the land.

In agriculture, to overcome the difficult situation in the existing problems, the government considers the rural cooperative system development and implementation; the question whether cooperation system is innovation or not for Georgia. In our opinion due to quite understandable reasons and circumstances, considerable practical knowledge and experience in this system does not exist, because seventy years of artificially controlled planned economy, prohibition of the free market, the private property and private enterprise, in the conditions of Soviet economies in the form of violent ``Industrial Cooperation" could not be developed. Moreover, since the declaration of independence in 1991, for some twenty years, a policy that has been well thought out and based on long-term strategic vision has neither been developed nor implemented.