What would a "good" industrial policy in the realm of cotton production look like? This article seeks to address this question through a focus on reforms to the cotton sector in Kazakhstan. In contrast with neighbouring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, administrators in Kazakhstan had widely freed...

With the goal of reducing the dependency on oil revenues, the Government of Kazakhstan has recently increased its budget allocations to prop up the domestic agricultural sector. Yet, many observers agree that it is less the amount of public spending that induces long-term growth than the quality...

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian countries have been faced with numerous development challenges in agriculture, especially those related to water use. Well-intentioned foreign donors and development agencies have stepped in to support local farmers, research...

The spread of information and communications technology (ICT) in Central Asia has reached a point where most farmers use smartphones with mobile internet access, providing an opportunity for a cost-effective and timely access to agricultural information and extension services. When extension...

Against the rising global concern of how to achieve sustainable output expansion in food, we document the main outcomes of post-Soviet agricultural recovery and restructuring in the Kazakhstan grain region. Together with an expansion of cropland area and increasing capital input, real...

Kazakhstan is now widely regarded as a key player on world agricultural markets, with considerable export potential in the wheat, beef and dairy sectors. Based on unique farm-level data, we offer new insights into the constraints that hamper further economic growth and provide an assessment of...

This article evaluates the recent evolution of farm structure in Kazakhstan’s grain region against the reform objectives of the 1990s and the family farm theory that underpinned the latter. In the study region, super-large agroholdings, large-scale enterprises and smaller individual farms...

Kazakhstan is now widely regarded as a key player on world agricultural markets, with considerable export potential in the wheat, beef and dairy sectors. Based on unique farm-level data covering all production systems currently relevant, we offer new insights into the constraints that hamper...

On the basis of portfolio selection theory, this paper finds that whole-farm risk must be regarded as a major reason for the low level of credit flow to agriculture in North-western Kazakhstan. A quadratic programming model was used in order (a) to demonstrate the comparatively high overall risk...