Tatyana Nefedova

From Spatial Continuity to Fragmentation: The Case of Russian Farming

Abstract The continuous zone of settlement long considered a defining feature of Europe, is undergoing spatial framentation along its eastern periphery. Massive areas of rural depopulation have emerged in many regions of European Russia, including its heartland. As a result of farmland abandonment, no fewer than 20 million hectares of arable land are already deserted in European Russia, and more will be left behind in the foreseeable future. The ongoing spatial fragmentation results in two diverging structures, identified on the basis of a unique district-structured database: an emerging archipelago of commercial farming, and the so-called black holes, the likely loci of soon-to-be-abandoned land. While land abandonment is by no means a uniquely Russian phenomenon, one of its preconditions in Russia is that farmland was extended beyond environmentally reasonable limits. The rural depopulation naturally leads to the contraction of farmland. Because land that is likely to be retained under cultivation is a better match to peoples actual ability to cultivate it, fewer resources are going to be wasted, and the overall efficiency of Russias agriculture is likely to rise as a result.

Land Abandonment in Russia

Field observations in two regions of European Russia (Kostroma and Samara oblasts) in summer 2010, reinforced by satellite imagery, provide a basis for a team of U.S. and Russian geographers to investigate ongoing changes in agricultural land use since the early 1990s. The authors highlight the contrasting situations in Kostroma (northern European Russia), where agriculture is limited and in retreat beyond relatively small scale operations in suburbia, and Samara (southern European Russia), where agricultural activity appears to be sustainable, albeit on a somewhat less extensive spatial scale than in the past. The comparison suggests that the change from central planning to unregulated market has not been popular, and that crop farming in both regions has better prospects than animal husbandry. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O130, P320, Q150, R140. 1 table, 17 figures, 21 references.

Trajectories in people's farming in Moscow oblast during the post-socialist transformation

Abstract The importance of personal food production to the reproduction of rural households in the Russian countryside has been widely acknowledged in the literature on the post-communist transition, but the variety of forms this mode of food production takes has not been explored. The authors show that there is a complicated micro-geography to the pattern of production on the allotments allocated to rural inhabitants that is related to a variety of geographical and historical factors, and to the nature of the relationship that exists between large and small farm sectors in post-communist Russia. Under certain circumstances, allotment production has become highly commercialised and has occupied the niche reserved in post-communist land reform legislation for private farms.

Differential urbanisation in Russia

Rapid yet delayed urbanisation close to that seen in the Third World, a history full of troubles, and a demographic condition that today has a Western look – such a combination makes the Russian case not an easy one for the differential urbanisation theory. Testing the latter for over 100 years by a period of time and population dynamic (with a sliding city class scale), the authors find that the all–Russian advances in the urbanisation stage were interrupted twice by the cataclysms of the century. After its third start, the stage lasted until the 1980s when signs of polarisation reversal were observed (this time in migration). The recent crisis was marked first by a steep turn to a premature counter–urbanisation, and then by a ‘swing back’. On ‘average’, the reversal looks most ‘normal’ for the 1990s’ stage. Several regional and local studies proved that the dates of stages depend on the general and the urban development level, although the relationship may be far from linear or even paradoxical (in the South and in the East of Russia). Also, the size–distance regularity is observed for the case of the Moscow agglomeration, prescribed by the differential urbanisation theory during the polarisation reversal stage. All these lead to the conclusion that the theory can explain the Russian trends when they are not deeply distorted by some extraordinary events, which, however, were and are so common in this country.

Land use changes in the environs of Moscow

This paper focuses on several aspects of land use change in Russia during the 1990s with a particular focus on the environs of Moscow. These aspects include modes of farming, recreation, ownership of land, and concentric zones of outwardly declining land use intensity that resemble Von Thunen’s economic landscape. These zones are given special attention. In contrast to other land use aspects, the analysis of which indeed reveals a fair amount of change bringing the environs of Russian cities one step closer to their Western counterparts, concentric agricultural land use patterns with outwardly declining productivity suggest continuity rather than change.

Areas of Crisis in Russian Agriculture: A Geographic Perspective

Two geographers with extensive experience in assessing developments in Russian agriculture and rural issues focus on changes in regional patterns of agricultural output during the 1990s. Patterns of soil fertility (bioclimatic potential) and urbanization are proposed as spatial factors that have long affected agricultural output in Russia, and their impacts are juxtaposed with aspatial elements of agrarian reform policy introduced at the national level. Attitudinal and structural characteristics affecting the propensity to adopt reform provide a framework for identifying differences between Russias Chernozem and Nonchernozem regions. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, Q10, Q15. 5 tables, 6 figures, 33 references.

Demographic and migratory responses to agrarian reform in Russia

When considering the prospects for agrarian reform in Russia, it is important to remember that people matter. It is all too easy to forget that the human factor exerts a profound influence on agrarian performance. Migration out of rural areas during the Soviet period drained the countryside of the young, the skilled and the ambitious. Rural migration trends since 1990 have not overcome the earlier consequences. In particular, spatial polarization remains a problem, new arrivals in rural areas have a non‐agricultural background, and the general demographic base for private agriculture is weak. Demographic factors therefore exert a profound influence on the Russian agricultural sector, making it difficult for reform initiatives to be optimized.

Persistent features of the Russian countryside: communal attachment and reform

This article analyzes the Russian agrarian scene at the turn of the century. Agrarian overpopulation, peasant communes, and the Stolypin reform are specifically examined with the intent of displaying features of the Russian countryside that have persisted through all of the political upheavals of the 20th century. Among them are: an east-west gradient of agricultural output per unit of land, an attachment to collective farming, the peasant character of Russian agriculture, and the regional pattern of reform.

Land Change in European Russia: 1982–2011

In this chapter, we use change analysis at three spatial resolutions (8 km, 500 m, and 30 m) to investigate land changes in European Russia occurring between 1982 and 2011. We first apply the nonparametric Seasonal Kendall trend test to the improved GIMMS 3g AVHRR NDVI dataset in three ten-year epochs: 1982–1991, 1991–2000, and 2000–2009. We investigate the changes in each individual period to determine the consistency of the change analysis. We then use Landsat and MODIS imagery to identify the arable lands in the grain belt of European Russia. We report on cultivation frequency, which is a key management decision that affects soil carbon stocks in croplands. We previously demonstrated for two MODIS tiles that the cultivation frequency strongly depends on location. Here we extend the analysis to a third MODIS tile. We conclude with a discussion of visible changes on the ground for four study regions: Kostroma, Chuvash Republic, Samara, and Stavropol.

INTENSIFICATION OF AGRICULTURE IN THE EUROPEAN USSR: REGIONAL ASPECTS

Spatial patterns of various measures of agricultural land use intensity are analyzed for the European USSR. In aggregate, these patterns serve as a basis for the identification of six subregions, the potentials and problems of which are described. Levels of overall fixed assets in agriculture show a pronounced gradient in the European USSR between high values (northwest) and low values (southeast), a trend which differs somewhat from the gradient of natural potential (high values south, low values north). Intraoblast differences in land-use intensity between suburban and more peripheral locations in the Nonchernozem Zone also are pronounced (translated by Andrew R. Bond).