Will the Siberian Fields Become Poorer? Agrarian Policy in the Mirror of All-Russian Agricultural Censuses

Abstract

All-Russian agricultural censuses of 2006 and 2016 provide extensive material for assessing the changes that have occurred over the past decade in the agricultural sector of the Russian economy as a whole and in individual regions. A marked increase in agricultural production in the country as a whole combines with a decrease in the area of cultivated land. The Siberian regions, traditionally considered the main producers of food grain, were significantly inferior to the Russian regions in terms of growth of agricultural production, and the area of agricultural land in the Siberian Federal district was reduced much faster than in the whole country. The observed trends and their consequences are largely due to changes in the volume and structure of land use, in the ratio between different types of farms. These changes, in turn, are the result of market and land reforms of the 1990s, as well as the transformation of the state’s agricultural policy in the mid-2000s. The slowdown in growth and, possibly, stagnation of the agricultural sector in Siberia are inevitable if there are no changes in agricultural policy aimed at compensating for market failures and providing opportunities for competition to agricultural producers located in regions remote from the main markets.