When Will Ukraine be a Global Player on World Agricultural Markets?

Competitiveness has been a subject of considerable attention in agricultural economics. In this paper we study the development of the international competitiveness of Ukrainian crop production between 1996 and 2001 using the concepts of Domestic Resource Cost and Private Cost Ratio. We distinguish between "average" and "best" farms to get a comprehensive picture of farm competitiveness in Ukraine. Our main conclusion is that agriculture responds quickly to incentives, and there are indications that Ukrainian agriculture has entered a phase of dynamic development. A shortage of human capital and physical bottlenecks in grain and oilseeds marketing could limit this development in coming years; if policy makers respond to these risks Ukraine could easily be a global player by the end of the current decade