ECONOMY

THE GEO-ECONOMICS OF RUSSIAN AGRICULTURE

SOURCE. Grigory Ioffe and Tatyana Nefedova. The Russian Food System's Transformation at Close Range: A Case Study of Two Oblast's. Washington, D.C.: The National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, August 2001.

Grigory Ioffe (Radford University) and Tatyana Nefedova (Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences) are leading experts on the economic geography of Russian agriculture. Here they present in-depth analyses of agriculture in Moscow Province and Ryazan Province, and draw wide-ranging conclusions about the spatial polarization of Russia's territory. (1)

The contrast between "center" and "periphery" exists at two levels -- between the national center (Moscow) and provinces distant from that center, and also between the center of any given province and its own periphery. In their own case study, the authors find that farms in Moscow Province are more productive than farms in equivalent locations in Ryazan Provinces, while farms closer to the central city of either province do better than farms near the borders of that province.

These differentials were already well marked during the late Soviet period, when centrally located farms (in both senses) received disproportionately great investment in equipment and infrastructure, as well as suffering less from the drift of skilled labor to the cities. The post-Soviet transition has greatly widened the differentials. Near-city farms cater to an easily accessible market for fresh produce, while outlying farms, no longer supported by state subsidies, go to rack and ruin. The result is an archipelago in which "islands of vibrant socio-economic life" are surrounded by "a sea of stagnation and decay."

The authors cite an observer (Boris Rodoman) who divides Russia into three segments: capital cities and their immediate environs; "the provinces" -- all remaining land within 2 kilometers of railroads, highways, and paved streets with year-round traffic; and "the boondocks" -- all other places, encompassing about two-thirds of the country.

(1) See also their books "Continuity and Change in Rural Russia" (Westview Press, 1997) and "The Environs of Russian Cities" (Edwin Mellon Press, 2000), and articles in Europe-Asia Studies (1998, No. 8) and Post-Soviet Geography and Economics (2000, No. 4).