Land reform in Ukraine and emergence of new private farms

Ukraine is one of the most dynamically changing agricultural countries in the world. The main factor behind the drastic changes in agricultural production is of course the Land Reform that started in 1991. Transfer of land ownership and restructuring of traditional farms created opportunities for the appearance of new farming units. Based on the survey data in Zhytomyr oblast, this paper investigates how private farms changed their farming sizes in the process of the Land Reform. This paper also discusses factors for the change and characteristics of expanding private farms. Private farms are classified into three categories by their direction of change in farm size : expanding, maintaining, and shrinking. Although owned land did not change between maintaining and shrinking farms, expanding farms increased their land size by acquiring registered partners and renting land. From the profile of studied farmers, the expanding private farms were generally younger and having good educational background. Furthermore, they introduced farming-related businesses such as food processing and direct sales. These findings suggest that market-oriented farmers have been emerging in the process of the Land Reform.