contents

• Trade
• Policy
• Outlook
• Issues and analysis
• Data

feature
Agricultural Productivity and Efficiency in Russia and Ukraine: Building on a Decade of Reform reviews the evidence on the productivity of agricultural production and explores some of the causes of inefficient practices. Implementing institutional reforms would allow productivity and efficiency in the agricultural sector to improve. Consequently, completing the reform program could allow Russia and Ukraine to emerge as significant grain exporters in the future.

recommended readings
International Evidence on Food Consumption Patterns analyzes expenditures across 114 countries on major consumption categories, including food and different food subcategories. Results indicate poorer countries are more responsive to price and income changes and also allocate larger shares of their total budget to necessities such as food.

Changes in Agricultural Markets in Transition Economies concludes that declines in output have been an inevitable part of market reform and that the main goal of agricultural policy in the transition economies should not be to return output to pre-reform levels but to increase the productivity of input use.

Livestock Sectors in the Economies of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: Transition from Plan to Market and the Road Ahead focuses on the livestock sectors of Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. Russia, along with Ukraine, has been one of the less successful reformers in the region. The report examines how incomplete farm-level and institutional reforms continue to prevent Russia's livestock sector from reaching its potential.

Could the NIS Region Become a Major Grain Exporter? indicates that production costs in the New Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union, relative to other producing countries, do not currently support large NIS grain imports or exports. Expected productivity growth in NIS grain production over the next decade, however, could result in the region becoming a medium-level grain exporter.

International Agriculture and Trade Reports: Transition economies contains discussions of three issues relevant to transition of the former Soviet block countries from centrally planned to market economies: restructuring the livestock sector, long-term forecasts of Russian and Ukrainian agricultural production and trade; and the efficiency of Russian agriculture during the reform period. Report also contains: "Ukrainian Land Reform and Farm Privatization: Still a Long Road Ahead."

International Agriculture and Trade Reports: Newly Independent States and Baltics tracks changes in import and export patterns in the post-Soviet area.

recommended data products
Key statistics contains data on population, gross domestic product (GDP), employment, consumer price index (CPI), exchange rate, trade, principal crops, and livestock.

Production, Supply, and Distribution (PS&D) contains official USDA data on production, supply, and distribution of agricultural commodities for the United States and major importing and exporting countries. The database provides projections for the coming year and historical data for more than 200 countries and major crop, livestock, fishery, and forest products.

Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States (FATUS) provides U.S. agricultural exports and imports, volume and value, by country, by commodity, and by calendar year, fiscal year, and month, for varying periods, such as 1935 to the present or 1989 to the present. Updated monthly or annually.

WTO Agricultural Trade Policy Commitments Database contains data on implementation of trade policy commitments by WTO member countries. Data on domestic support, export subsidies, and tariffs are organized for comparison across countries. This queriable database offers various options for viewing and downloading data.

Agricultural Market Access Database (AMAD) is a publicly available information tool for analyzing WTO market access issues in agriculture. It contains data and information for WTO member countries, including tariff schedules, tariff bindings, applied tariff rates, country notifications to the WTO, import quantities, and other data useful in tariff analysis.

Agricultural Statistics for the Former Soviet Republics and the Baltic States covers land use, farm structure, population, labor force, agricultural inputs, grains, livestock sector, and food consumption. Soviet data generally include 1960-90; data for republics cover 1980-95.

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related briefing rooms
Agricultural baseline projections
World Trade Organization (WTO)
Russia
Poland
Hungary

related links
Websites of other USDA agencies, other Government agencies, and international organizations with information about Ukraine.

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for more information, contact: William Liefert
web administration: webadmin@ers.usda.gov
page updated: October 17, 2003