Kazakhstan's wheat system: priorities, constraints, and future prospects

This paper provides an overview of Kazakhstan's wheat system following independence and identifies policies and constraints currently influencing the operation and development of the system. It also looks at the factors affecting production decisions, including the current operating environment, intra-sectoral linkages, and overall macroeconomic conditions and identifies several alternative sources of productivity growth that can potentially improve the current and future competitiveness of Kazakhstan's wheat producers. The paper emphasizes that the wheat system cannot operate in isolation from the rest of the economy. Regaining lost levels of productivity can only be accomplished with some level of coordinated policy linking the priorities of the wheat system with those of the agricultural sector and the economy as a whole.