Plentiful Harvests: Understanding Uneven Rural Recovery in the Post-Soviet Region

In the 1990s, post-Soviet rural economies suffered from a staggering decline in production and accelerating outmigration. Since the early 2000s, some agricultural producers have managed to reverse the decline and are thriving: they have updated production facilities, improved productivity, increased production, and exports. Plentiful harvest and rural recoveries have a potentially significant impact on human development in these countries, many with sizable rural populations

They are also very uneven - recovery has happened only in some subsectors, in geographically and institutionally diverse countries, and not at all in others. One aspect of this recovery is particularly interesting: growth has happened despite what is described as "weak" governance institutions in many of these countries. What explains why some subsectors, in some countries, are thriving, while others have been unable to make ends meet? My research examines the sources and patterns of rural recovery in post-Soviet countries.