The presented research assesses the opportunities and prospects for increasing Russian agricultural exports to China. Over the past few years, trade cooperation between Russia and China has significantly intensified, especially in the field of agricultural products. According to the Russian Trade representative office in China, exports of agricultural products and food products in the first quarter of 2020 reached a value of 1071.1 million dollars and became the second largest after exports of mineral fuel, oil and petroleum products. Due to its high population, China is a promising market for Russian agricultural products and food products. At the same time, there are a number of institutional barriers, as well as independent factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that can have a significant impact on this process. The study assesses the demand for agricultural products using econometric analysis. The analysis shows that in 2020, it is possible to expect a decrease in the volume of exports of processed food and agricultural products from Russia to China, which is probably the result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the previous positive dynamics demonstrates the possibility to increase the volume of exported Russian products in the future. To do this, government agencies must implement a policy to optimize logistics interaction and provide the necessary funds. A significant limitation is the lack of awareness of Russian agricultural producers about the procedures for exporting products to China. The solution to this problem is possible through the use of resources of the Russian Trade representative office in China. Ultimately, it is necessary to consider the possibility of creating a specialized Russian retail network in China.
In the context of import substitution, the role of agriculture was identified as a systemically important industry in ensuring economic security and reducing agricultural dependence on imports. A significant amount of investment in the industry brings to a higher level not only agricultural production, but also subsidiary industries, which had previously been unprofitable and underdeveloped. The role of subsidiary industries in the activities of agricultural organizations is undeniable, since lost crafts are being recreated, employment in the countryside remains, the economic potential of agricultural organizations is increasing, and their production is without waste. The purpose of the study is to diagnose the development of subsidiary fisheries in agricultural organizations of the Russian region and determine further prospects and forecasts of their development. The development of subsidiary industries and crafts is necessary both for the development of rural areas and for increasing the level of interaction between authorities and producers.
The article discusses the problems of strategic management of the agricultural sector of Russia. In this regard, the approaches of the scientific community to characterizing the essence of the category "strategic management" as long-term action programs are presented. It has been shown that in the development of the agricultural economy, it has different directions of impact, due to a change in the economic basis and the differentiation of the productive (rental) opportunities of agricultural production of regions, which have been aggravated by despecialization and disintegration in market conditions. This situation is derived from non-adaptive agrarian macroeconomic policies, which, without taking into account the peculiarities of agrarian reproduction, have allowed intersectoral economic relations into free market navigation. In other words, the imperfection of the market, the fetishization of private, especially land ownership with the purchase and sale and the birthmarks of feudalism, alienating it from land use are results as well as the absolutization of the importance of large forms of agrarian production. In the latter, together with the processing and resource-providing industry, that is, in all three subsystems of the agro-industrial complex, foreign capital plays a large role, which carries social, economic, environmental and epidemic risks when systemically important enterprises are eliminated on the ground. The article substantiates the need for the scientific community and the macroeconomic leadership to develop a new scientifically based paradigm for strategic management of agricultural production, which comes from the modern development of productive forces, which are close to the framework of agrarian and unregulated market relations. In this regard, the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia recommends the transition to a model of integrated innovation management based on a problem-functional approach.
The article presents the main provisions of the analytical study of target indicators and indicators of the Federal Scientific and Technical Program for the Development of Agriculture for 2017-2025 (FSTP). FSTP is aimed at a comprehensive solution to the existing problems of scientific support of the agro-industrial complex, at creating conditions for the formation of competitive scientific and (or) scientific and technical results, as well as for transferring scientific results to production and their subsequent involvement in economic circulation. The system of indicators and indicators of the program should quantitatively characterize the results of the implementation of measures taken, the solution of the main tasks and the achievement of goals. That is, the main task of the indicators and indicators of the program is to assess the effectiveness of the planned activities, as well as to establish benchmarks in the implementation of established goals. However, the analysis showed that the existing system of indicators and indicators of FSTP violates not only logical provisions, but also three regulatory acts that establish the requirements for the development of state programs. The principles of necessity, uniqueness, objectivity, and reliability have been violated. The FSTP target indicators, which should set guidelines for achieving the main goals of the implemented strategy, characterize the state and effectiveness of the implementation of the state program, are not at all connected with its final results. The proportion of indicators of the FSTP subprograms that do not reflect the objectives of the program, such as “The number of personnel engaged in research and development in organizations performing work on selection and seed production of potatoes / sugar beets (full-time)” or “Number of research and educational organizations participating in the implementation of the subprogram ”significantly exceeds the number of indicators that truly reflect the solution to the country's food security problems. The system of indicators and indicators requires modernization to objectively and unambiguously reflect the progress of the program.
As a result of the lack of modern storage facilities, the majority of owners of small forms of management continue to have private urban fruit and vegetable bases, intermediaries, resellers, speculators and large retail chains at the expense of poor producers increase their incomes by 2-3 times, purchasing their goods for no price, which led to a massive reduction in the planting area of potatoes. The creation of non-waste agro-industrial enterprises of the potato-growing direction and the construction of fast-moving storage facilities in them will quickly remove the potato-growing sub-complex from the crisis. Today in Russia, out of 70 million tons of solid household waste alone, only 8‰ is processed, not to mention millions of tons of organic food waste. The creation of industrial-type agricultural production and trade cooperatives, agro-industrial enterprises and associations will reduce organic waste by using it to feed animals; increase productivity in the field (farm) - consumer system by 2-3 times; Improve customer service; reduce storage space, speed up the preparation of quality dishes with the least labour costs, etc.
In recent years, in the agriculture of our country in general and the Stavropol Territory in particular, production volumes have been declining. The main reason is a reduction in resource potential - the area of farmland, working capital and fixed assets. Due to the lack of investment, agricultural business structures are forced to move to a narrowed reproduction of fixed assets, to increase the burden on the agricultural equipment at their disposal. For the most part, low-level, and often unprofitable, results of agro-industrial organizations had become factors of their unattractiveness for investors, while their own sources of financing for making investments to transition to an innovative development path were insufficient. In the current situation, the agricultural sector needs to use more widely methods and tools of econometric fashion and forecasting of investment activity, which reveal reserves for increasing investment in the industry, and contribute to improving the effectiveness of agricultural entrepreneurial structures. The relevance of the topic is also confirmed by the need to study the main directions of agricultural development in the region in order to develop timely recommendations for adjusting the investment activity of organizations of the Stavropol Territory taking into account alternative situational scenarios.
New strategic guidelines of the Russian agro-industrial policy include a turn to an innovative model of development, and towards to stimulation and support of the technological renewal of the agro-industrial complex along the entire value chain. A critical component of this policy is to neutralize the most significant factors that restrict the creation and use of innovations in agribusiness organizations. Neutralization measures require appropriate information support, solving the problem of identifying substantial factors. Many studies are devoted to this topic. In continuation of this line of research, the article aims to identify the most significant limiting factors, taking into account industry differences within the agro-industrial complex. It takes into account the significant heterogeneity of the agro-industrial complex, which includes a number of sectors with their industry characteristic. Among the sectors, there are agriculture, food industry, production of machinery and equipment for agriculture and process industries, infrastructure activities. In other words, the significance of the limiting factors is useful to evaluate depending on the agribusiness sectors. The information base of the study is the data of the Federal statistical observation, which allows us to cover the range of limiting factors presented in the literature such as financial and investment, information, personnel ones, etc. The research method developed by the authors includes ranking, comparative analysis, and grouping of objects. The conducted research makes it possible to (1) determine the factors that are most significant for most agribusiness sectors; (2) assess the significance of the factor depending on the agribusiness sector; (3) highlight the agribusiness sectors with the highest expected effect of neutralizing the limiting factor. The results obtained are intended for informational support of agro-industrial policy measures aimed at eliminating the significant limitations of innovation activity, taking into account their dependence on the agro-industrial sector.
The main characteristic of the technological structure was the most effective use of a key resource: labour, fixed assets, land, and technology. As a research tool, production functions are proposed, in particular, a function with constant elasticity of the substitution norm. It is proposed to use the production function to analyze the change of technologies, technological layouts and paradigm, since product production can expand by changing the costs of current production to the optimal value, when the profit from the produced products will be maximum. In addition, the expansion of production can be achieved through the development of production forces and the introduction of new technologies. The technological paradigm is a broader concept that includes technological frameworks based on a single principle of production. For crop production, this principle is currently the cultivation of land. Despite the change in technological structures in the production of crop products, the basis of agricultural technology did not fundamentally change. However, the possibilities of soil are limited and global production is already approaching the technological limit of such a resource as land, which requires the formation of a new technological paradigm for the production of crop products, the essence of which is the cultivation of crops and the production of food products without the use of soil.
The achieving sustainable development should be a target setting and a unique competence for each rural territory of our country. The categorically new content of forming the concept of sustainable rural development is the expansion of the scale and processes of digitalization and informatization in agriculture and rural areas, innovative development of agro-industrial sectors, optimization of agricultural technologies, the use of robotic and automated management and production systems. The article goes on to consider that digital technologies are one of the key factors of sustainable development of rural areas. The assessment of the current state of innovation activities of rural producers and the development of informatization processes in rural areas of the Nonchernozem zone of the Republic of Bashkortostan is carried out. The article has a word about a foresight forecast of the long-term implementation of digital technologies in rural areas of the considered zone of the region. «Leaders» («reference») and «outsiders» («target») rural municipalities, based on the results of the foresight of the formed expert focus groups, were identified by the level of digital technology development at the zonal level. Summing up the actual achieved level of economic development directly affects the processes of introduction of digital and information technologies in the studied rural areas. Upcoming trends for the introduction of digital technologies in rural areas and agriculture in the Nonchernozem zone of the region have been formed. It is summarized that the use of foresight technologies allows us to quantify the impact of the level of digitalization on the sustainable development of rural areas in the new technological way.
The stability and safety analysis in a single link is due to their proximity and orientation, as they complement each other in a certain way. Timely identification of threats and risks to the economic security of agricultural enterprises increases the level of food security, which determines the relevance of the research topic. Data on monitoring threats to economic security of rural territories of the arid region of the Republic of Kalmykia are given. An integrated approach to assessing the economic security of rural areas is proposed, which includes not only quantitative indicators of the activities of agricultural enterprises, but also an assessment of the level of socio ecological and economic threats, which will allow taking into account the specifics of the rural territories of the region, its natural, environmental, sectoral, ethnocultural, ethno-confessional features. The proposed methodology allows assessing threats to the economic security of a rural municipality using integral indicators based on the results of agricultural enterprises located in this territory and socio-ecological-economic indicators of a rural municipality. The use of an effective scientific methodology would make it possible to objectively assess the risks and threats to economic security that have a different nature of emergence and to rank rural municipalities of the republic according to the level of threats to economic security on the basis of the developed integral indicator.