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The outdated investment development path results in Eastern Europe and the lack of focus on the agricultural sector necessitated this study. The generalised least squares estimator employed countries from 1993 to 2021 for agricultural sector data on 17 Eastern Europe. Eastern European agriculture is in the early phase of stage IV of the investment development path, consistent with the theory of the investment development path. Human capital enhanced net foreign direct investment. Agricultural trade openness, exchange rate, and inflation did not influence net foreign direct investment. Developed and transition countries in Eastern Europe were not distinguished regarding net foreign direct investment. Eastern European countries must increase agricultural growth relative to population growth. This would increase agricultural development. The increased income can be saved and channelled into domestic investments to spur additional growth. This would make capital available for export. The growth in human capital must be sustained to enhance technical know-how in agriculture that would accompany agricultural capital export. Agricultural sector managers of Eastern European countries must focus on enhancing the sector's supervisory and regulatory functions. The goal should be to reduce the costs of doing agricultural business through effective facilitation towards efficient agricultural markets.

The paper assessed the effect of economic policy on the effects of aid to agricultural production and consumption on agricultural growth in developing countries. We used data from a panel of 117 countries from 1996 to 2020 fitted to a GMM estimator. We found that both aid-to-production and aid-for-consumption discourage agricultural growth. Economic policy independently enhances agricultural growth. Foreign direct investment promotes agricultural growth. In the presence of economic policy, whilst aid-to-production did not discourage agricultural growth, it worsened the effect of aid-to-consumption on agricultural growth. Among other recommendations, developing countries should seek less foreign aid-toproduction and more FDI into agricultural production as both the former and the latter would increase agricultural growth. Governments in developing countries must enhance trade and macroeconomic policies and promote FDI as this would increase agricultural growth.

Following the implications of the loss of employment, revenue, foreign exchange, and the negative impact on overall agricultural development resulting from foreign divestment, estimates of the extent of foreign divestment on agricultural development and policy options for ameliorating this effect were obtained. A cross-sectional data of 159 observations was fitted to a derived model and estimated by OLS. One US$ increase in foreign divestment reduces agricultural development by US$ 0.04. Policy mixes involving the combination of domestic investment, aid, and trade in response to foreign divestment in agriculture have been proposed. The best policy mix is the combination of domestic investment, aid, and trade to respond to foreign divestment in agriculture. Aid to agriculture independently was ineffective in promoting agricultural development, however, other variables produced a synergistic effect. Despite efforts to attract foreign direct investment in agriculture, foreign divestment does occur with the associated disbenefits to the sector which is detrimental to agricultural development. It is important to identify the policy options to address this in the study.