Rural Development and Food Security The countryside in Eastern Europe and Central Asia lags

behind the cities, which offer more and better jobs, social serv-ices, and cultural opportunities. The post-communist transi-tion introduced new rural/urban imbalances: while cities ben-efitted from foreign investment and private enterprise, collec-tive farms and their social infrastructure collapsed. Poverty and unemployment rates in rural areas have worsened; and rising food prices have gen-erated food insecurity fears. Rural underdevelopment is also a reflection of the incomplete reform agenda. Agri-cultural cooperatives, once common in the region, are now often seen as an awkward progeny of socialist-era collective and state farms, rather than as market-driven efforts to capture economies of scale. Farmland i