BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb.17
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
The agricultural sector of Georgia accounts for 41 percent of all employed citizens, Trend reports via Georgian media.
In Georgia, 41 percent of people employed in rural areas create only 6.5 percent of GDP
The main problem of the agricultural sector in Georgia is its extremely low efficiency - the yield of vegetables and fruits per hectare is several times lower than in developed countries. The same goes for milk yield from each cow and the amount of honey collected from one apiary.
In 2020, the export of wine amounted to $210 million, spirits - $132 million, nuts - $94 million, citrus - $27 million.
In addition, the export of meat and livestock amounted to $40 million.
The main reasons for the low efficiency of agriculture in Georgia are small farm sizes and lack of technology. In 2019, the agricultural sector produced goods worth $1.4 billion, both for export and domestic demand.
In some sectors of agriculture, efficiency is very slow, but still growing - in particular, the sowing of annual crops in 2014-2019 decreased from 275,000 to 203 hectares, but at the same time the wheat crop increased from 48,000 to 101,000 tons, vegetables - from 154,000 to 161,000.
At the same time, potato production fell from 215,000 to 195 tons per year, and corn production - from 292,000 to 207,000 tons.
In parallel, the production of fruits is also decreasing, except for grapes - in particular, in 2014-2019, the production of vegetables decreased from 597,000 to 523,000 tons.
Indicators in animal husbandry are also decreasing - the number of cattle fell from 970,000 to 870,000, pigs - from 170,000 to 165,000, sheep - from 866,000 to 842,000.
Pork production in the same period increased by 5.7 percent to 18,300 tons, beef - decreased by 3 percent to 22 100 tons, milk - decreased by 4.6 percent to 562 million tons. Production of chicken meat increased by 56 percent to 22,800 tons.
Recently, the number of large farms in Georgia has been growing, and this, to a certain extent, contributes to an increase in efficiency, however, without the introduction of modern technologies, this growth will remain extremely limited.
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