Estonia - Agriculture

Arable land covers 25 percent of the territory, permanent pastures 11 percent, and woodlands 44 percent. The foods produced include animal products, cereals, potatoes, fruits and vegetables, and fish. Agriculture was the traditional livelihood of most Estonians before

Communications
Country	Newspapers	Radios	TV Sets a	Cable subscribers a	Mobile Phones a	Fax Machines a	Personal Computers a	Internet Hosts b	Internet Users b
	1996	1997	1998	1998	1998	1998	1998	1999	1999
Estonia	174	693	480	15.1	170	N/A	34.4	174.65	200
United States	215	2,146	847	244.3	256	78.4	458.6	1,508.77	74,100
Russia	105	418	420	78.5	5	0.4	40.6	13.06	2,700
Latvia	247	710	492	58.0	68	N/A	N/A	50.86	105
a Data are from International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication Development Report 1999 and are per 1,000 people.
b Data are from the Internet Software Consortium ( http://www.isc.org ) and are per 10,000 people.
SOURCE: World Bank. World Development Indicators 2000.

Soviet collectivization in the 1940s and there were over 100,000 family-held farms. After independence in 1991 land privatization carved thousands of new private farms out of the Soviet cooperatives. By the mid-1990s, these farms produced nearly 70 percent of the crops and 40 percent of the livestock, but most were unable to afford fertilizers, fuel, seeds, or capital investments. Competition from foreign producers put many farms out of business, and adjusting the sector to EU standards has been controversial. As a result, agricultural output decreased and almost one-fourth of the arable land was abandoned.