Organic Agriculture in Russia: Development, Particularities and Possible Socio-Ecological Effects
https://doi.org/10.31857/S2587556621050137
Abstract
The article analyzes the particularities of organic agriculture development in Russia and its geographical patterns. Unlike European countries, large investors were the first to develop organic agriculture in Russia; the main motives of these pioneers were related to issues of healthy food and, to a lesser extent, environmental or social issues. From the approach of theory of diffusion of innovations, the development of organic agriculture in Russia is in its early stages. Nevertheless, the number of farms and lands under organic agriculture is growing steadily, service industries and distribution channels are being formed, and an institutional environment in the form of associations and national legislation has been created. In the spatial distribution of organic enterprises, there is a dependence on natural conditions and the agrarian history of the territory. Processing enterprises tend to cluster in the Moscow region as the largest sales market. The possibilities of expanding organic agriculture in mountainous rural areas are considered. In the last sections authors discuss potential socio-ecological effects of organic agriculture for maintaining the resilience of rural areas in Russia.
Keywords
agricultural systems,
green agriculture,
diffusion of innovations,
geography of agriculture,
organic products,
territorial resilience
Supporting agencies: The article was prepared in the framework of a research grant funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (grant ID: 075-15-2020- 928). The section “The Potential of Organic Agriculture in Mountain Rural Areas of Russia” was prepared within the framework of the state-ordered research themes of the Institute of Geography RAS nos. 0148-2019-0006 and 0148- 2019-0008.
About the Authors
R. G. Gracheva
Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences; National Research University Higher School of Economics
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Moscow
A. V. Sheludkov
Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences; National Research University Higher School of Economics
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Moscow
References
1. Agriculture at a Crossroads: The Global Report. McIntyre B.D., Herren H.R., Wakhungu J., Watson R.T., Eds. IAASTD, 2009. 610 p.
2. Allaire G., Poméon T., Maigne E., Cahuzac E., Simioni M., Desjeux Y. Territorial analysis of the diffusion of organic farming in France: Between heterogeneity and spatial dependence. Ecol. Indic., 2015, vol. 59, pp. 70–81.
3. Altieri M.A., Nicholls C.I., Funes F. Agroecology scaling up for food sovereignty and resiliency. In Sustainable Agriculture Reviews. Lichtfouse E., Ed. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012, vol. 11, pp. 1–29. doi 10.1007/978-94- 007-5449-2_1
4. Belyakova Z.Yu. Organic products: the current legal forms of production and turnover support. Tekhn. Tekhnol. Pishchevykh Proizvodstv, 2018, vol. 48, no 3, pp. 140–151. (In Russ.).
5. Bjørkhaug H., Blekesaune A. Development of organic farming in Norway: A statistical analysis of neighbourhood effects. Geoforum, 2013, vol. 45, pp. 201–210.
6. Boncinelli F., Bartolini F., Brunori G., Casini L., et al. Spatial analysis of the participation in agri-environment measures for organic farming. Renew. Agric. Food Syst., 2015, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 375–386.
7. Choi H. A typology of agro-innovation adoptions: the case of organic farming in Korea. Reg. Environ. Change., 2016, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 1847–1857.
8. Clark S. Organic farming and climate change: The need for innovation. Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, 7012.
9. Ferguson R.S., Lovell S.T. Permaculture for agroecology: Design, movement, practice, and worldview. A review. Agron. Sustain. Dev., 2014, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 251–274. doi 10.1007/s13593-013-0181-6
10. Gracheva R., Belonovskaya E., Vinogradova V. Mountain grassland ecosystems on abandoned agricultural terraces (Russia, North Caucasus). Hacquetia, 2018, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 61–71. doi 10.1515/hacq-2017-0010
11. Gulyanov Yu.A. The steppe of the Orenburg region – from bread center to health center of Russia. Vopr. Stepevedeniya, 2020, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 70–79. (In Russ.). doi 10.24411/9999-006A-2020-10008
12. Gunderson L. Ecological and human community resilience in response to natural disasters. Ecol. Soc., 2010, vol. 15, no. 2, 18.
13. Hendrickson, M.K., James, H.S. The ethics of constrained choice: How the industrialization of agriculture impacts farming and farmer behavior. J. Agric. Environ. Ethics., 2005, vol. 18, pp. 269–291. doi 10.1007/s10806- 005-0631-5
14. Khanal A.R., Mishra A.K., Omobitan O. Examining organic, agritourism, and agri-environmental diversification decisions of American farms: are these decisions interlinked? Rev. Agric. Food Environ. Stud., 2019, vol. 100, no. 1, pp. 27–45.
15. Kuo H.J., Peters D.J. The socioeconomic geography of organic agriculture in the United States. Agroecol. Sustain. Food Syst., 2017, vol. 41, nos. 9-10, pp. 1162–1184.
16. Kurichev N.K., Ptichnikov A.V., Kotov A.V., Vinogradova V.V., Gracheva R.G., Cherenkova E.A. Managing territorial resilience in the face of global climate change. In Ustoichivoe razvitie v period pandemii: prirodnye resursy, izmenenie klimata i rezilientnost’ territorii [Sustainable Development in a Pandemic: Natural Resources, Climate Change, and Territorial Resilience]. Proskuryakova L.N., Ed. Moscow: Vyssh. Shkola Ekonomiki, 2021, pp. 24–44. (In. Russ.).
17. Lyuri D.I., Goryachkin S.V., Karavaeva N.A., Denisenko E.A., Nefedova T.G. Dinamika sel’skokhozyaistvennykh zemel’ Rossii v XX veke i postagrogennoe vosstanovlenie rastitel’nosti i pochv [Agricultural Land Dynamics in Russia in the 20th Century and Post-Agrogenic Recovery of Vegetation and Soils]. Moscow: GEOS Publ., 2010. 416 p.
18. Milestad R., Darnhofer I. Building farm resilience: the prospects and challenges of organic farming. J. Sustain. Agric., 2003, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 81–97.
19. Mitusova Yu.A., Buivolova A.Yu. Development of organic agriculture in Russia. In Prodovol’stvennaya bezopasnost’ v Evraziiskom regione [Food Security in the Eurasian Region]. Moscow: Ekspert Publ., 2017, pp. 7–30. (In Russ.).
20. National Research Council. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2010. 598 p. doi 10.17226/12832
21. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Agriculture and Climate Change: Policy Imperatives and Opportunities to Help Producers Meet the Challenge. Washington D.C., 2019. 70 p. doi 10.13140/RG.2.2.35006.43843
22. Nefedova T.G. Twenty-five years of Russia’s post-Soviet agriculture: Geographical trends and contradictions. Reg. Res. Russ., 2017, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 311–321.
23. Olson D.M., Dinerstein E., Wikramanayake E.D., et al. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: a new map of life on Earth. Biosci., 2001, vol. 51, no. 11, pp. 933–938.
24. Padel S. Conversion to organic farming: a typical example of the diffusion of an innovation? Sociologia ruralis, 2001, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 40–61.
25. Privitera D. The importance of organic agriculture in tourism rural. Applied Studies in Agribusiness and Commerce, 2010, vol. 4, nos. 1–2, pp. 59–64.
26. Schmidtner E., Lippert C., Engler B., Häring A. M., Aurbacher J., Dabbert S. Spatial distribution of organic farming in Germany: does neighbourhood matter? Eur. Rev. Agric. Econom., 2012, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 661–683.
27. Sheludkov A.V. Territorial structure and organization of agriculture in Tyumen oblast in 1973 and 2014: Comparative analysis. Reg. Res. Russ., 2019, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 278–287. doi 10.1134/S2079970519030080
28. Taus A., Ogneva-Himmelberger Y., Rogan J. Conversion to organic farming in the continental United States: A geographically weighted regression analysis. Prof. Geogr., 2013, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 87–102.
29. van Mansvelt Ya.D., Temirbekova S.K. General position of organic agriculture in Western Europe: concept, practical aspects and global prospects. S-kh. Biol., 2017, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 478–486. (In Russ.). doi 10.15389/agrobiology.2017.3.478rus
Review
For citations:
Gracheva R.G., Sheludkov A.V. Organic Agriculture in Russia: Development, Particularities and Possible Socio-Ecological Effects. Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk. Seriya Geograficheskaya. 2021;85(5):675-686. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31857/S2587556621050137
Views:
603
Email this article 
