Safety in Small Numbers: Local Strategies for Survival and Growth in Romania and the Kyrgyz Republic.

Using a comparative study of farm households from poor rural commlunities in Kyrgyzstan and north-east Romania this paper explores the intricacies of a variety of forms of cooperation in agriculture. The fundings highlight the safety net, labour specialiation, asset-pooling and service delivery functions of different groups that enable rural livelihoods to, at times, cope and that time improve in situations of imperfect information, sluggish labour and land markets, and constrained capital markets. The research presented here indicates that small to medium forms of cooperation provide the rural poor with predicable livelihood strategies under conditions of uncertainty. Specifically, cooperation action, in the form of groups, substitutes for imperfect markets. Despite the push for decollectivisation and privatisation across transition countries there remains a place for encouraging group initiatives, at least for the medium term, on the grounds of both poverty alleviation and agricultural growth.