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Overview
In 1995–96 the President of Azerbaijan, Heydar Alieyev, launched a program of agrarian reforms that caused a sweeping and irreversible shift from Soviet-style collective agriculture to individual farming in his country. These reforms led to an impressive recovery and substantial productivity improvements in agriculture. The agrarian transition in Azerbaijan contrasts with that in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, where land privatization has been accompanied by policies encouraging the persistence of large corporate farms and where agricultural recovery has been much less impressive. For this reason Azerbaijan is today viewed as one of the few examples of successful land reform in the former Soviet Union. The impact of the Aliyev agrarian reforms went far beyond the recovery of agricultural production. The new policies had a significant impact on rural poverty and they were instrumental in increasing the incomes of Azerbaijan's large rural population, which relies on agriculture for a substantial part of the family budget. To understand the successes and limitations of land reform, Rural Transition in Azerbaijan evaluates the record of rural reforms, focusing on policy change, farm level performance, and the impact of reforms on rural incomes and rural family well-being-issues that today are at the core of the agenda in many international organizations.
Synopsis
The book demonstrates that reform policies_including privatization of land and the shift from collective to individual farming_have a significant impact on agricultural growth, rural incomes, and poverty alleviation. The analysis spans more than 40 years of agricultural and rural development in Azerbaijan, based on country-level statistical data and original farm and household surveys.
Editorials
William H. Meyers
This is a careful, comprehensive and scholarly work which documents the path of agricultural and rural reform in Azerbaijan and persuasively links rural economic performance to policy decisions. Because of the solid economic analysis and the cogent comparisons with other transition economies, it is far more than a study of Azerbaijan. It is a treatise on how policies drive economic performance and how policy differences can explain divergent performance paths in transition economies.Ulrich Koester
Azerbaijan is one of the few countries which instituted a land reform leading to high agricultural performance. Hence, this book is much more than just a country-specific case study. It will spur the debate on the design of land reform and farm sizes and its impact on world agriculture. It should be required reading for academics and policy makers who want to understand the present poor performance of agriculture in many transition and developing countries and who want to develop policy alternatives which make the disadvantaged in the world more self-sufficient.Ulrich Koester, Kiel University