Relying on the frontier production approach, we investigated the performance of the agricultural sector in 28 transition countries and its changes over time, especially focusing on the dynamics of productivity changes and the effects of reform policy. Our findings are: (i) Asian and CEE transition countries performed better than CIS countries, while the performance improvement of CEE countries seems to be more prominent compared to that of Asian and CIS countries; (ii) The productivity growth is mainly attributable to the technical progress, particularly in CEE countries; (iii) Reform policy and industrial transformation seems to have positive effects on the performance of agricultural sector and its changes; (iv) The initial conditions do matter.