Development of Peasant Farms in Central Russia
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Development of Peasant Farms in Central Russia SERGEI SAZONOV & DAMIRA SAZONOVA Independent Economic Analytical Center of Peasant Farms, Tambov, Russia. E-mail: [email protected]
The article looks at peasant farms in Tambov Oblast, a typical Central Russian region, discussing the legal framework for private farming, the regional land policies, and the socio-economic factors that encourage or inhibit the development of peasant farms. The data collected in an ongoing original survey are used to analyse the growth of peasant farms, the use of inputs, the activity portfolio, the level of commercialisation, and the efficiency of production during 1992–2002. The conclusion is that, under the prevailing conditions, individual farming cannot be expected to expand beyond its limited present scope by attracting broader strata of the rural population. Comparative Economic Studies (2005) 47, 101–114. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ces.8100079
Keywords: Russian agriculture, transition economies, individual farms, land reform, farm inputs JEL Classifications: O130, P250, P260, P270, Q120, Q150, Q180
Peasant farmers are a special legally defined category of agricultural producers in Russia. Together with household plots, they form the individual sector of Russian agriculture. These are individual or family farmers who differ from household plot operators at least in two main respects: (a) they are without any formal employment affiliation with the local corporate farm (or the local municipal authorities); (b) they receive relatively large land allotments from the state for the explicit purpose of engaging in commercial farming. Peasant farmers (krest’yanskie (fermerskie) khozyaistva in Russian) are often referred to in the literature as ‘private farmers’ or ‘independent farmers’, to emphasise their separation from large corporate farms. Some general features of peasant farms in comparison with other agricultural producers are discussed by Uzun (2005). In this chapter we focus
S Sazonov & D Sazonova Development of Peasant Farms in Central Russia
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on the particular case of peasant farms in Tambov Oblast – a province in the fertile central-chernozem region, 400 km southeast of Moscow, between the rivers Don and Volga. The data are primarily derived from a survey of Tambov peasant farms conducted by the authors on an annual basis since 1993. The development of peasant farms in Tambov Oblast in the early 1990s proceeded without any help or interference from the regional government. As everywhere else in Russia, the Tambov newspapers voiced concerns that the creation of peasant farms would destroy the large farm enterprises from within by depriving them of qualified labour and by encouraging massive theft of seeds, fertiliser, fuel, spare parts, and so on. Yet the regional government neither showed special favouritism nor discriminated against peasant farms. They were simply not at the top of its agenda, and through benign neglect the emerging peasant farms in principle enjoyed the same privileges as the estab
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