Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture

Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture No. 1/09


Agroholding membership:
does that make a difference in performance?

Heinrich Hockmann
Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central in Eastern Europe, Halle (Saale), Germany

Raushan Bokusheva
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland

Irina Bezlepkina
Wageningen University, The Netherlands


Abstract

Comparing different organizational, managerial and economic indicators of the farms in two selected regions, the study investigates whether agroholdings perform better and thus can be regarded as a promising organizational model for Russian agriculture. A comparatively poor performance of agroholdings’ members in both regions implies that this organisational form suffers from principal management problems hampering the move of agricultural production towards efficient trajectories. The insights regarding farm restructuring, marketing activities and performance cannot however be simply transferred to Russian agriculture in general. In both analyzed regions the establishing of agroholdings was strongly promoted by the local government which induces a bias in the reason to integrate.

Keywords: agroholdings, competitiveness, Russia

JEL: Q13

Vol. 48 (2009), No. 1: 25-46