Structure and Marketing of Agricultural Output Before the 1990s,
Albania's main food crops were wheat, corn, fruits, and
vegetables (see Table 7, Appendix). However, planners were
devoting increasing attention to tobacco, olives, and oranges.
Between 1989 and 1991, the country's crop structure underwent a
radical transformation. The new private farmers took
responsibility for transporting and selling their output and
began basing their production and marketing decisions on
freemarket conditions. Low state procurement prices, a shortage
of livestock feed, the breakdown of the transportation system,
and a lack of demand from idled processing plants led to steep
declines in the hectarage sown with wheat and such industrial
crops as tobacco, sugar beets, sunflowers, and cotton. Disputes
arising out of the government's land-privatization program,
shortages of funds for seeds and agricultural machinery, and the
hasty privatization of the enterprises that provided farmers
with machinery and fertilizers also had an e