Bread baskets, fuel supplies and bio tech crops: Will the Central and Eastern European countries take part in the second Green Revolution?

Higher prices, changing diets and subsided biofuel production have all helped increase foreign investment in agriculture. With its large fertile plains, advantageous growing conditions and low land prices, Central and Eastern Europe holds especial interest for investors. Already, multinationals have acquired hundreds of thousands of hectares of farm land in Ukraine and Russia and in the next few years, the EU members in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) will remove restrictions on foreign, or at least EU national, ownership. This paper considers whether Hungary, Poland and Romania will be part of this new scramble for land. Rural tenure is dominated by smallholdings owned by elderly, often urban based owners and this fragmentation and attendant transaction costs have proved enduring obstacles to land market development. This paper examines recent struggles over land ownership, focusing on policy interventions that have acquired private land in exchange for enhanced pensions. As elderly owners abandon landholding, what are the chances that this land will be bought up by foreign investment funds? What might be the impact on the rural economy? How will it affect rural de-population and under-employment? What role will local actors and institutions have in attracting investment and influencing its impact?