Classification of Russian Regions by the Level of Agricultural Development in 2019–2021

Abstract

The urgency of improving mathematical and statistical tools for analyzing agricultural complex across the territories of our country depends on the gravity of the issue of interregional differentiation of the scale of development of agricultural production, which plays a crucial role in the implementation of the Food Security Doctrine of the Russian Federation.The introductory part of the article presents an overview of the literature on food security issues, an analysis of the current state of domestic agriculture, and directions for its development. The body of the article explains the research methodology, which allows to classify, first andforemost, agricultural regions (indicating their territorial location, socio-economic characteristics, and predictive characteristics). As an indicator of the intensity of agricultural development in the regions, the authors used the volume of agricultural production per capita, which became a criterion for selecting 25% of the regions with the maximum values of this indicator. That said, by an agro-region (or agricultural region) is meant a region that produces more agricultural production than needed and exports its surplus outside the region or country (food exports). In the multidimensional classification of agro-regions, three clusters are determined (according to the level of socio-economic development, the development efficiency of the economic activity «Agriculture, forestry, hunting, and fishing», and the volume of crop and livestock production). The paper analyses the dynamics and predictive characteristics of the development of the cluster-average volume of agricultural production per capita (including crop production and animal husbandry). An analysis of the dynamics of exports of food products and agricultural raw materials per capita by clusters revealed that the regions of the first cluster are the most actively developing, and the regions of the third cluster (with the most developed animal husbandry) are oriented towards domestic consumers.According to the authors, during the analyzed period in Russia, there was a positive trend in the development of agriculture, with the development of agro-regions outpacing all-Russian trends. The highest development rates are typical for agro-regions with a balanced development of crop and livestock production (regions of the first cluster).