Summary

Agriculture played the key role in the total economic development in our country. However, in the last decade of the previous century agriculture has gone through numerous diffficulties due to unfavourable political and economic conditions. The share of agriculture in the social product was raised from 10.2% in 1990 to 23.2% in 2000, this being the common feature of countries with an underdeveloped economy. In most Balkan countries the process of transition intiated more than 10 years ago is still under way. The transition process in agriculture has gone through different phases depending on the country the reason being that different privatization models were used as well as social, i.e. state capital, different shares of the social and cooperative agricultural land in the total agricultural land, different development levels of production power etc. Governmental, cooperative and social agricultural enterprises were primarily effected by transition with an impact on the production of some major commodities. The key factors contributing to the decline of production were ignorance, inexperience, impacts of international institutions dictating the need to accelerate the transition process, failure of the import-export connections, NATO aggression on our country, etc. Lack of turnover capital, investment capital and production modernization, export restrictions to European countries and underdeveloped market strategy are known to have  impeded the increase of agricultural production which would have contributed to a significant role of our commodities on the European market and worldwide.

          Key words: transition, agricultural production, market, Balkan countries.