ABSTRACT
Post-independence agricultural restructuring in the Kyrgyz Republic presents a puzzle: output has recovered since 1996 but rural incomes have stagnated. This unexpected situation results from a privatization process which has focused on the creation of new, small farms who have oriented themselves toward subsistence production, accompanied by a shift in the labor force into agriculture during 1990s. At the same time processing capacity and downstream linkages have deteriorated, inhibiting rapid income growth. Agricultural is the largest sector in the economy of the Kyrgyz Republic, accounting for 38.3 percent of GDP in 1999, and 51.6 percent of employment. The process of agricultural restructuring in the Kyrgyz Republic is unfolding rapidly. It is arguably the swiftest and most far-reaching structural change among the agricultural sectors of the CIS countries. As of January 2000, 42 percent the arable land in the country had come under the control of 69,000 small and medium sized farms formed since independence.1 The other 58 percent is managed by 600 corporate-collective farm enterprises which have maintained much of the structure of their predecessor state and collective farms, under a variety of new legal forms. State-owned agricultural production enterprises have diminished to about 50 enterprises primarily engaged in seed production and breeding-stock development, and most of these are now undergoing privatization. But if the Kyrgyz Republic is to be looked at as a ‘fast-track’ country of the former Soviet republics in agricultural restructuring, its puzzling growth trajectory also holds important lessons for other restructuring agricultural economies.
