PRIORITY DIRECTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT AND PLACEMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN THE FAR EAST
Authors:   Federal Research Center for Agrarian Economics and Social Development of Rural Territories - All–Russian Research Institute of Agricultural Economics, Kleptsova Nadezhda Alexandrovna 
Published: October 2024

The problem of spatial development of agriculture largely affects the entire socio-economic system of the state and more than one quarter of the country's population. In this regard, the adoption and implementation of the State Program of Integrated Rural Development for the period up to 2025 will somewhat weaken the destructive processes in agriculture, especially in depressed territories, where depression has actually acquired the character of desolation and depopulation of huge and sparsely populated rural areas, and with the focal management of the industry. However, in general, the state has taken only scattered measures to improve the balance of spatial development of agriculture, the introduction of only separate and often unrelated forms of its territorial organization, the concentration of agricultural production in areas and regions with the most favorable agro-climatic and soil conditions and favorable economic and geographical position relative to the capacious markets for its sales. Natural factors, as a rule, are the most geographically differentiating development of agriculture, largely determining the location, specialization and concentration of its individual sub-sectors, especially crop production, for which soil and climatic conditions play a decisive role in the spatial organization of the sub-sector. It is during the cultivation of agricultural crops, as a rule, that natural resources are transformed into organic plant matter under a certain thermal regime, humidity and soil fertility level. Therefore, due to differences in natural conditions, the cultivation of almost all crops is carried out within the boundaries of certain areas with less or more limited space, characterizing a certain combination of natural and economic conditions. The main problems hindering the realization of the economic potential of the Far East and the Baikal region are their economic and infrastructural isolation from the rest of the country and its most developed markets. The separate southern territories of the Far East and the Baikal region, united by a single transport and energy infrastructure, are more integrated. There is an increase in the focal nature of settlement with a low population density, accompanied by its further concentration in urban settlements, aging and population decline. Restraining factors also include: the specificity of farming conditions, high costs, subsidization and seasonality of cargo delivery for the Arctic and northern regions of the Far East, a high component of transport costs for the transportation of goods and passengers between the Far Eastern regions and the rest of Russia, extreme climatic conditions, the presence of isolated operating power systems and energy districts, the cost and inefficiency of the structure of energy sources. Undeveloped energy and transport infrastructure, directly or indirectly, continues to be the main constraint on the implementation of any types of activities in the Far East and in the Baikal region, the reason for the low competitiveness of manufactured products, goods and services.