Agrarian transformation in the Russian breadbasket: contemporary trends as manifest in Stavropol'

A team of US and Russian geographers combines field observations with satellite imagery in an examination of how major trends in Russian agriculture are manifest in one of Russia's most productive agricultural regions: Stavropol' Kray. A nationwide pattern of agricultural consolidation during the 1990s (featuring rural depopulation and a reduction in cultivated area and herd sizes upon the termination of Soviet-era subsidization levels) has had decidedly different outcomes in different parts of the vast Russian countryside. This paper – using Stavropol' as a surrogate for regions which by physical attributes, location, and human capital are best positioned to support agricultural activity – identifies a number of developments that may signal a new growth trajectory for agriculture in Russia: evolving specialization of former socialized farms in response to market conditions (in Stavropol' involving the shrinkage of animal husbandry and the release of surplus labor); increased levels of absentee (corporate) ownership of farmland in the more favorable locations; decoupling of the economic fate of large farms (success) from local municipal budgets (deficiency); and the expansion of non-Russian ethnic communities in the countryside, with attendant land use changes.