Methodological Provisions of Modeling Spatial Development of Agriculture in Russia: Undeservedly Forgotten, but Still in Demand

Abstract

One of the main drawbacks of the existing economic and mathematical models of the spatial organization of agriculture in the country is the relatively weak relationship between the development, placement and specialization of its individual sub-sectors. Therefore, the results of their application do not always adequately reflect the spatial development of agriculture in the regions of the country. A model with a block-diagonal matrix structure, developed and success-fully tested in the 80s of the last century, was largely devoid of these shortcomings. Despite the fact that she was intended for a planned economy, many of the proposed methodological provi-sions in solving the task of optimizing the development, rational placement and deepening of agricultural specialization in the country have not lost their scientific and practical significance. So, in the process of developing and solving the problem, methods of mathematical statistics, linear programming and traditional methods of economic analysis were organically combined, and when substantiating various options for the spatial development of agriculture, methods of multi-criteria optimization were used. Particular attention was paid to the preparation of baseline information, a business case, the use of advanced technologies, the rational use of production resources, which made it possible to identify the bottlenecks in the spatial organization of agri-culture and propose optimal solutions.