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In October 1995, LTC was asked to begin a study of rural land issues in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, with funding from USAID/Skopje at the request of the World Bank. The research aimed to identify the constraints to agricultural productivity in the two subsectors that constitute the agricultural sector: small private farms (80% of the land), which are fragmented and, according to the government, inefficient; and large state vertically-integrated agroenterprises (20% of the land), whose "big fields," according to the government, are efficient. The research team was led by an LTC researcher, with the participation of four to six Macedonian academics from the University of Sts. Cyril and Methodius and a UW research assistant. The research, completed in July 1996, concluded that small private farms were more productive and profitable than expected, despite many obstacles, and that large state-owned farms were less productive and profitable than expected, despite many advantages. The results became a significant input into the policy dialogue between donors and the Macedonian government. This will yield a significant change in the country's agricultural development strategy.
LTC Publications about Macedonia
LTC has developed experience in the former Soviet Union by responding to requests for participation in review of the reforms taking place there. In 1991, two LTC staff members participated in an FAO seminar on land law issues sponsored jointly with VASKhNIL (All Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences), and one of them returned as the tenure specialist in the World Bank's first agricultural sector mission to Russia. A high-level delegation from the academy visited Madison in late 1991 to draft a linkage agreement with LTC. The agreement, signed in May 1992, allowed the two institutions to examine together the reform processes and their impacts, and LTC provided assistance to the Academy in assessing techniques, expertise, and research methodologies available in the US.
In September 1993, a consortium including the UW-Madison was awarded a contract by the USAID/NIS Task Force to implement land-privatization activities in the Commonwealth of Independent States. LTC, as the UW's prime land-related institution, was heavily involved in the work under that contract, which included a study of alternative models of state and collective farm restructuring; design of pilot land titling and registration systems; implementation of a public education and information program about private land ownership; and design of a "post-privatization" assistance project. Under the AID NIS Task Force "Omnibus" Privatization Project, LTC had a subcontract to Chemonics International to assist in land privatization activities. During 1994, LTC (Bloch, Dorner, Kanel, Thiesenhusen) participated in a study of existing models of state and collective farm restructuring in Russia; this led to pilot work on farm restructuring by Chemonics. Under a program to install real estate information systems in several Russian cities, LTC supplied two land titling and registration specialists, Susan Nichols of the University of New Brunswick (2 months on design) and Brenda Haskins, UW masters in Urban and Regional Planning (6 months on implementation). In 1995, LTC supplied a GIS/land information specialist, Mohamed Mohamed, a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Monitoring (6 months on implementation. The program came to an end in October 1995.
In 1995-96, LTC hosted two visiting scholars from Russia. One of them, Dr. Natalia Zenets of the Agrarian Institute in Moscow, developed a research program on mortgage credit in the agricultural sector, which she has continued to pursue after her return to Russia. LTC is continuing contact with her and her Institute in anticipation of future collaborative research opportunities. The other visiting scholar, Dr. Sergey Mitsek, Dean of Commerce of the (private) Liberal Arts University in Ekaterinburg, conducted research on Employee Stock Ownership Plans in the US, with the hope that some variant could be applied to privatized enterprises (including farms) in Russia.
Trip Report: Malcolm Childress, November 7-11, 1999
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