Land reform and farm restructuring have always been a major component of the
transition from plan to market in all formerly socialist countries, and especially
in the 12 former Soviet republics forming the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS). Ukraine, the second most populous country in CIS (after Russia) and
the third largest by area (after Russia and Kazakhstan), began the process of
agrarian reform in March 1991, six months before the declaration of independence
from the Soviet Union. However, all through the 1990s international organizations
berated Ukraine for its slow and insufficient reforms. Derogatory phrases like "one
step forward, two steps back", "changing the sign on the door", "disappointing
performance", "lack of vigorous progress" were universally (and justifiably) used
to describe the Ukrainian reforms during the presidency of Leonid Kravchuk
(1991-1994) and then (perhaps with less justification) under Leonid Kuchma
(1994-2004). Evaluating the outcomes of nine years of reforms through 1999,
World Bank experts summarized the conclusions of their continuous monitoring
efforts in the following uncomplimentary language (CSAKI, LERMAN, 2001):
In Ukraine, land reform has been mostly limited to transforming state
ownership into collective ownership… The weak reforms have failed to
radically change the traditional collective organization of Ukrainian
farms… Break-up and internal restructuring of large farms has been very
limited. Hence it should not be a surprise that the transition process is not
delivering in terms of increased profitability and efficiency.
The "big bang" came in December 1999 in the form of Presidential Decree
No. 1529/99 "On immediate measures to accelerate the reforms in the agricultural
sector". By this decree Ukraine made the momentous decision to complete land
privatization through conversion of the "land shares" – paper certificates of
landownership previously distributed to the rural population – into demarcated
and titled physical plots. This decision, long advocated by international donors,
set Ukrainian land policies sharply apart from the policies of other large CIS
countries (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus), and put Ukraine roughly on the same
land reform path as the two smallest CIS members, Moldova and Azerbaijan.
January 2005 marked the five-year anniversary of this landmark decree. FAO
accordingly launched a monitoring study to assess the outcomes of reform since
2000 and to formulate a set of policy recommendations based on the post-2000 reality in the rural sector.1 The overall purpose of the study was to determine to
what extent and in what ways there had been fundamental changes in land and
farm policy after 2000. The methodology included a structured questionnairebased
survey of three constituencies representing the Ukrainian farm structure:
The managers of large corporate farms, individual peasant farmers, and operators
of rural household plots (this survey is referred to as the 2005 FAO farm
survey). Interviews were also conducted with regional agricultural officials to
get a view of farm-level changes "from the outside". Official national statistics
were used to construct a picture of sectoral changes. The survey was designed to
conduct a comparative analysis of land rights, management structure, and economic
performance in the two main sectors of Ukrainian agriculture – corporate farms
and individual farms. We were also planning to collect information that would
enable us to detect significant differences between the "new wave" corporate
farms created on the basis of the new legislation in the post-2000 period and the
"old wave" descendants of the traditional collective and state farms.
The study is a collaborative effort of three institutions: The Policy Assistance
Branch of FAO’s Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (REUP) in Rome,
the UNDP-sponsored Agricultural Policy for Human Development (APHD) project
in Kiev, and the Institute of Sociology, also in Kiev. David Sedik as the Head of
REUP was responsible for the overall design, management, and coordination of the
study. Vladimir Artyushin and Nikolai Pugachev from the APHD project were in
charge of the local implementation of the study in Ukraine, including collection and
analysis of sectoral data. Yurii Privalov, Aleksandr Goncharuk, and Maria Olenina
from the Institute of Sociology were responsible for the survey field work and oversaw
the construction of the computer database with the survey data. Zvi Lerman
from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem provided overall scientific guidance
for the survey and, together with David Sedik, carried out the final analysis on
which the study is based.
This book is organized in two parts. Part I presents a brief overview of the
agricultural policy environment in Ukraine before and after 2000, followed by a
detailed discussion of the legal foundations of land and farm reform and an
overall picture of the impacts of reform on the farm sector since 1990. Part II
presents the findings of a survey of nearly 1,400 individual and corporate farms
conducted in the spring of 2005 in eight oblasts. The survey has been designed
to provide focused information highlighting the changes that occurred at the
farm level since the 1999 Presidential Decree. The Executive Summary at the
beginning of the volume contains the main findings of the study and some
policy recommendations. The last chapter (Chapter 16) brings together our main
conclusions in a more detailed format. The main literature and data sources used in the study are given in the list of
references at the end. Tables and figures without references to a specific source
are based on the 2005 FAO farm survey.
