After the break-up of the Soviet Union and a turning away from large-scale and often highly subsidized agriculture, today many rural regions in Georgia are characterized by subsistence agriculture. This also applies to the Kazbegi region, a mountainous region in the Greater Caucasus of Georgia. During Soviet times and at the beginning of the transition period, the main agricultural activities were vegetable production in greenhouses (based on gas supply from Russia) and livestock husbandry. With the break-up of the Soviet Union this situation has changed. Today, there are mainly small-scale agri-food producers and only a few market-oriented farmers. However, during the last decade, tourism in the Kazbegi has also been on the rise. The growth in tourism could provide opportunities for small-scale agri-food producers to increase their income by marketing their surplus production to the tourism sector and thereby improve their livelihoods. Against this background, this dissertation analyzes the current status and perspectives for linking agriculture and tourism in the Kazbegi region, among other things through an analysis of the agri-food chain. The results show hurdles for linking the sectors (such as a low agricultural production efficiency or noncompliance with food safety standards) but also potential ways how small-scale agri-food producers could market their products to the tourism sector in order to improve their income generation. In addition, with the help of a best case scenario and a worst case scenario potential future perspectives of the Kazbegi region are developed. The best case scenario shows a multi-sectoral development with agriculture and tourism in the region which reduces the risk of dependencies from only one sector and contributes to a sustainable development of the region. The worst case scenario depicts a mono-sectoral development with no agricultural production in the long term and heavy dependency on tourism, which is not recommendable. In order to reach a multi-sectoral development with incentives to work in the agricultural sector, more support for agri-food producers would be needed, for example through consultancy or access to finance. The conceptual framework of the study is provided by the theory of cultural lag of William F. Ogburn. As a methodological approach a qualitative research design has been chosen. Encompassing exploratory interviews and focus group discussions with the local population as well as expert interviews, it allows an analysis of the topic of interest from various angles. The study is embedded in the broad field of multi-sectoral, bottom-up rural development approaches that aim to improve the livelihoods of small-scale agri-food producers.The study was developed within the framework of the project AMIES II - Scenario development for sustainable land use in the Greater Caucasus, Georgia which was funded by the VolkswagenStiftung and implemented by the Center for international Development and Environmental Research (ZEU) of the Justus Liebig University Giessen in cooperation with three Georgian Universities.
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