Agroholdings, turbulence, and resilience: The case of Ukraine

Abstract

The agricultural sector in transitional and emerging market economies is marked by the prominence of agroholdings, i.e., conglomerates of agricultural enterprises controlling up to hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland. Drawing on secondary information from Ukraine, this paper explores how institutional turbulence gives rise to agroholdings. The key hypothesis is that membership in an agroholding presents a strategy for agricultural enterprises to remain resilient in the midst of the severe institutional turbulence characteristic of a transitional economy. The focus on resilience provides a tentative explanation of why the remarkable growth of agroholdings fails to be accompanied by evidence of their superior efficiency.