Food policy research for improving the reform of agricultural input and output markets in Central Asia

Agriculture is a significant component of the Central Asian economies. Sinc e independence, the republics have implemented agricultural reforms in vary ing measure, yet production has fallen sharply across the region. The more ambitious agricultural reform programs have included measures aimed at libe ralizing agricultural marketing, trade and prices. However, so far the expe cted supply response has yet to emerge. The objective of this paper is to h ighlight key policy and research issues surrounding reform of agricultural markets. It summarizes the main features of agricultural performance since the reforms, highlighting trends in grain and cotton, livestock, input use, and trade and analyzes key constraints to improvement of the sector, empha sizing price policy, sequencing problems, and institutional weakness. It pr esents a research agenda by identifying the main research needs for better agricultural policy design. It calls for more research on input and output market efficiency, private sector development, the effects of reform on far mers, sequencing issues, comparative advantage, water management, land tenu re and farm size. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.