Good governance and good land administration in Georgia
Chanturia, Lia
In Georgia, the first attempts to introduce rural sector reform can be traced back to the mid-1970s, when the Government started to experiment with leasing land to farmers. Due to political opposition to this idea, the experiment failed and no further developments took place until 1988, when large tracts of land in five rayons were transferred to farmers. At that time, however, those experiments had no legal significance since all land was State-owned. By the early 1990s Georgia had 781 collective farms each with an average 1.800 hectares of productive farmland, and 255 workers and management staff. In the Soviet Union, Georgia was a major producer of fruits and vegetables, wine grapes and table grapes, citrus fruit and tea. About 90 per cent of farm products were sold outside Georgia. Independence resulted in a loss of traditional farm markets in other republics of the former Soviet Union and led to the collapse of State and collective farms. That forced the Government, in January 1992, to start distributing land to all citizens of the country as the main way to fight poverty.
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