From Spatial Continuity to Fragmentation: The Case of Russian Farming

Abstract

The continuous zone of settlement long considered a defining feature of Europe, is undergoing spatial framentation along its eastern periphery. Massive areas of rural depopulation have emerged in many regions of European Russia, including its heartland. As a result of farmland abandonment, no fewer than 20 million hectares of arable land are already deserted in European Russia, and more will be left behind in the foreseeable future. The ongoing spatial fragmentation results in two diverging structures, identified on the basis of a unique district‐structured database: an emerging archipelago of commercial farming, and the so‐called black holes, the likely loci of soon‐to‐be‐abandoned land. While land abandonment is by no means a uniquely Russian phenomenon, one of its preconditions in Russia is that farmland was extended beyond environmentally reasonable limits. The rural depopulation naturally leads to the contraction of farmland. Because land that is likely to be retained under cultivation is a better match to people's actual ability to cultivate it, fewer resources are going to be wasted, and the overall efficiency of Russia's agriculture is likely to rise as a result.