This book clarifies the status quo and mechanisms of agricultural and rural development in today’s Russia, especially focusing on human capital and human development. It provides readers insights into agricultural and rural development from the perspectives of agricultural economics, developmental economics, and regional–spatial science. Further, it addresses key research questions such as whether agricultural development in Russia has made significant strides, whether it has improved the nation’s food security and rural development, and whether structural changes in the agricultural sector as well as human capital have had impacts on agricultural development since the 2000s. In terms of analytical methods, structural equation modeling and stochastic frontier analysis are employed to capture the relationship between agriculture and rural development in regional Russia. In closing, policy challenges are identified to promote social innovation for rural development by enhancing the human capital of rural youth, including entrepreneurship. Given its scope, the book is highly recommended for all readers seeking an in-depth and up-to-date overview of agricultural and rural development in contemporary Russia.

This Open Access book analyses the emergence of Russia as a global food power and what it means for global food trade. Russia's strategy for food production and trade has changed significantly since the end of the Soviet period, and this is the first book to take account of Russia's rise as a food power and the global implications of that rise. It includes food trade policy and practice, and developments in regional food trade. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners in agricultural economics, international trade, and international food trade.

Winner, 1999 Edward A. Hewett Book Prize from AAASS A comprehensive, original, and innovative analysis of the social, economic, and political factors affecting contemporary Russian reform, the book is organized around the central question of the role of the state and its effect on the course of Russian agrarian reform. In the wake of the collapse of the USSR, contemporary conventional wisdom holds the the Russian state is "weak." Stephen Wegren feels that the traditional approach to the weak/strong state suffers from measurement and circular logic problems, believing that the Russian state, thought weaker than in its Soviet past, is still relatively stronger than other actors. The state's strength allows it to intervene in the rural sector in ways that other power contender cannot.Specifically, as a measure of state intervention, Wegren analyzes how the state has influenced urban-rural relations, rural-rural relations, and the nonstate (private) agricultural sector. Several dilemmas arose that have complicated successful agrarian reform as a result of the nature of state interventions, how reform policies were defined, and the incentives rhar arose from state-sponsored policies. During contemporary Russian agrarian reform, urban-rural differences have widened, marked by a deterioration in rural standards of living and increased alienation of rural political groups from urban alliances. At the same time, within the rural sector, reform failed to reverse rural egalitarianism. In addition, the nature of state interventions has undermined attempts to create a vibrant, productive private rural sector based on private farming.Wegren's research is based upon extensive field work, interviews, archival documents, and published and unpublished source material conducted over a six-year period, and he demonstrates the link between agrarian reform and the success of overall reform in Russia. This learned and often controversial volume will interest political scientists, policy makers, and scholars and students of contemporary Russia.

In the last two centuries, agriculture has been an outstanding, if somewhat neglected, success story. Agriculture has fed an ever-growing population with an increasing variety of products at falling prices, even as it has released a growing number of workers to the rest of the economy. This book, a comprehensive history of world agriculture during this period, explains how these feats were accomplished. Feeding the World synthesizes two hundred years of agricultural development throughout the world, providing all essential data and extensive references to the literature. It covers, systematically, all the factors that have affected agricultural performance: environment, accumulation of inputs, technical progress, institutional change, commercialization, agricultural policies, and more. The last chapter discusses the contribution of agriculture to modern economic growth. The book is global in its reach and analysis, and represents a grand synthesis of an enormous topic.

This book aims to provide a comprehensive statistical picture of the Russian economic development covering the Imperial, Soviet, and New Russian periods. The authors have reconstructed Russian socio-economic statistics from both published and archival materials. The book gives concise descriptions as well as new insights on the Russian economic development. Compiled such that estimations by the authors are kept to a minimum and extensive explanations and notes on the sources, the definitions, the statistical methodologies, the problems and inconsistencies of the original data, and the pitfalls of interpreting the time series are given makes this a standard reference book of the Russian economic history. It will be of value to economists, scholars of collectivist economics, and scholars of Russia and the Soviet experience.

This volume is written primarily for agricultural economists doing research on productivity. It includes discussions of the theoretical underpinnings of productivity measurement as well as the many practical considerations that go into translating this theory into actual measures of aggregated outputs and inputs. The unifying concept of agricultural productivity used across the chapters of this volume is aggregate total factor productivity (TFP) of the sector. The volume also contains detailed analysis of the underlying causes of agricultural productivity growth. Part I (chapters 2-6) examines agricultural productivity in high-income and transition countries. Part II (chapters 7-11) examines agricultural productivity growth and its driving forces in five important agricultural producers in Asia and Latin America. Part III (chapters 12-14) focuses on measuring and identifying constraints to agricultural productivity growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Part IV (chapters 15-16) gives a global perspective on agricultural productivity.