ABSTRACT
The following analysis intends to contribute to the development of ‘pro-poor land policies’ in Armenia, and is focused primarily on improving the position of peasant farms and their poor and vulnerable households, for which land is still the main ‘safety network’. 1 The agricultural sector in Armenia has been dominated by small-scale landholdings since a redistributive land reform in the early 1990s. Land policies are highly relevant in Armenia today, as the country has entered a new phase (or wave) of land reform, through the massive transfer of remaining state-owned land to the jurisdiction of the communities and by finalising the formal registration of private land titles in the period 2003–2005. Taking into account the interlocking roles of land, credit, services, output and input markets, the institutional framework, and the appropriateness of some forms of intervention in these markets, the analysis directs itself to the following questions: What can the state do to improve the growth of agricultural output, without worsening already high rural unemployment and weakening the safety net that land has represented for the rural poor? Does it leave everything to the market, apart from providing public goods, and create a facilitative institutional framework, or can it go beyond this role of the ‘minimal state’, steering as it were the development of markets, and safeguarding the interests of those in the weakest positions? The latter — in rural Armenia — are without any doubt those who have little or no land. Therefore, while many factors are important in analysing the success and failures of the agricultural sector’s economy of Armenia, land and the access to it, are indeed of crucial importance.
