Changes of the dynamic of agrarian lands of Russia in 1990–2014

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of croplands dynamics during crisis and post-crisis period (1990–2014) in 68 agrarian developed regions of the Russian Federation. Three types of dynamics are revealed: “sustainable decreasing (deagrarization),” “decreasing–stabilization,” “decreasing–growth (re-agrogenesis).” It is shown that the principle change of trends of area croplands is observed in the present days: from large-scale decreasing to stabilization and growth in the majority of regions in the country. It is proved that combination of the bioclimatic potential (BCP) and rural population decrease are those major factors which define allocation of three types of dynamics of the cultivated lands and well describe change of croplands for the last 25 years. Influence of rural population change on dynamics of croplands is analyzed at different levels of BCP. This influence has the strongest effect in the regions of “decreasing–stabilization” type. In the regions of “sustainable decreasing” this effect is the lowest (low level of BCP) and for regions of “decreasing–growth” this effect is the weakest (high level of BCP). Therefore, from the middle of the 2000th we observe a rapid restoration of that spatial and factorial matrix of change of the agrarian areas which was created in the second half of the 19th century and has survived all events of the last century and the events of the beginning of this century.