The following analysis intends to contribute to the development of ‘pro-poor land
policies’ in Armenia, and is focused primarily on improving the position of peasant
farms and their poor and vulnerable households, for which land is still the main
‘safety network’. The agricultural sector in Armenia is dominated by small-scale land
holdings since a redistributive land reform in the early 1990s. Land policies are highly
relevant in Armenia today, as the country has entered in a new phase (or wave) of
land reform, through the massive transfer of remaining state owned land to the
jurisdiction of the communities and by finalising the formal registration of private
land titles in the period 2003-2005. Taking into account the interlocking role of land,
credit, services, output and input markets, the institutional framework, and the
appropriateness of some forms of intervention in these markets the analysis directs
itself to the following questions: What can the state do to improve the growth of
agricultural output, while not worsening already high rural unemployment and
weakening the safety net that land has meant for the rural poor? Does it leave
everything to the market, apart from providing public goods, and creating an
facilitative institutional framework, or can it go beyond this role of the ‘minimal
state’, steering as it were the development of markets, and safeguarding the interests
of those who have the weakest position? The latter – in rural Armenia – are without
any doubt those who have little or no land. Therefore, while many factors are
important in analysing the success and failures of the agricultural sector’s economy of
Armenia, land and the access to it, is indeed of crucial importance.