The chapter includes analysis of the current state of agricultural production in Russia, addresses the major problems and limitations of its efficiency and substantiates the perspective ways of growing intensification of agricultural production in Russia on the basis of integration of agricultural producers, growing scales of agricultural production, rational management of natural resources and effective utilization of existing resource and environmental potential.
TopBackground
Achievement of sustainable economic growth, increase of living standards of population, and ensurance of food safety of the country are the macro problems of the Russia’s economy. Their solution is possible on the basis on innovation of national agri-industrial complex.
Such an objective is set by the national priority project “Development of Agri-Industrial Complex”, “Strategy of Innovation Development of Agri-Industrial Complex until 2020”, and State Program “Development of Agriculture and Regulation of Markets of Agricultural Commodities, Raw Materials and Food on 2013-2010”. Those documents emphasize the necessity to re-orient national agriculture on innovation way, which lets to increase effectiveness of production, decrease dependency on import deliveries, develop competitiveness, and ensure sustainability of agriculture.
Peculiarities of intensification of agricultural production and issues of environmental management in agriculture have been investigated by a number of foreign and Russian researchers. For the purposes of our research we have addressed works of Foley et al. (2011), Foley et al. (2007) and Goulding, Trewavas and Giller (2011), related to effective utilization of available natural resources for agricultural production; researches of Garnett and Godfray (2012), Garnett et al. (2013), Kassam (2008), Kassam et al. (2009), and Kassam and Friendrich (2012) in the sphere of sustainability of agricultural production. Many researches paid special attention to environmental issues of agricultural intensification. Matson et al. (1997) investigated influences of intensification on ecosystems; Tilnam (1999) and Tilnam et al. (2011) studied global impacts of agricultural expansion, while Jepson (2014), Sawadogo (2011), Vandermeer and Perfecto (2005), and Wheeler and Braun (2013) addressed specific environmental impact of agricultural intensification on soils, waters, and air.