OBTENCIÓN DE INFORMACIÓN SECUNDARIA

ABSTRACT

Russian dairy enterprises underwent dramatic changes during 1990-2001. Not much is known about the position of these enterprises under the new conditions. This study examined a sample group of dairy enterprises in the Moscow region to try to identify similarities and divergences in historical background, perform- ance, managerial and structural characteristics. A unique farm-level data set from 1990-2001 was used. Assessment of historical characteristics revealed that the currently most successful enterprises were those which in pre-reform years had already shown better economic performance. These farms also had, for the period studied, smaller percentages of reduced resources, no severe debt problems, and better overall management.

Keywords: performance, management, cluster analysis, dairy enterprises, Russia. 1 INTRODUCTION

In the past decade, Russian agriculture has undergone transformations that have had important impacts on the current settings in agriculture. This study only analyses agricultural enterprises, which in Russia co-exist with other agricultural producers such as family farms and private households. Agricultural enterprises, i.e. the former collective and state enterprises, lost part of their share in gross agricultural production but nevertheless kept their contribution to national em- ployment (12% in 2000) and still operate on about 80% of total agricultural land in Russia. Having experienced forced restructuring and reorganisation in 1992- 1995, the enterprises did not give way to private farming. Currently there are still more than 24,500 agricultural enterprises (data of 2001). In line with na-

tional statistics (see GOSKOMSTAT, 2002) on average, the agricultural enterprises

declined in size, had lower economic performance, especially in the period 1996-1998 and experienced declining productivity. Agricultural enterprises in Russia still dominate among the commercial agricultural producers and thus de- termine the development of the sector.

∗ _{Social Sciences Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands.}

Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected].

A large body of literature focuses on the relation between the performance of Russian agricultural enterprise and characteristics such as their size, manage- ment, debts, restructuring and their relation with the state and urban service pro-

viders (EPSTEIN, 2001; PEDERSON et al., 1998; SCHULZE et al., 2001; ZEDDIES,

2000). The researchers stress the lack of effective management, which unargua-

bly plays an important role in agricultural enterprises (KOESTER, 2003; SCHULZE

et al., 2001; VISSER, 2003; ZEDDIES, 2000). Previously the impact of initial pre-

reform conditions was investigated in multi-country studies and appeared to be

important (MACOURS and SWINNEN, 2000). DAVIDOVA et al. (2003) stressed the

need to identify long-lasting phenomena determining the current performance of farms in Central and Eastern European countries. There has been no substantial study of historical conditions and their impact on farm performance for Russia. It is a well-established fact that economic performance can differ considerably

between farms1_{, even under more or less similar production conditions. UZUN}

(2002) defined five groups of farms according to their solvency. The first group of financially sound farms (22% in 1999-2000) produces 51.5% of total market- able output. By comparison, the worst performing group includes 27% of farms, contributes 6.4% to total marketable output and has a level of outstanding debts that is four times larger than that of the first group. In general, this can be due to differences in management, which can be considered the fourth major factor in production, in addition to the traditional factors land, labour and capital (ROUGOOR et al., 1998). There has been no study of variation in enterprise per- formance in relation to historical conditions and management in Russia, because

e difficulty of quantifyi g managerial abilities, and (b) the absence of cteristics as age, education, experience, etc., his study unobservable management was assessed elated characteristics over time.

of (a) th n

reporting such managerial chara

which are usually studied. In t through various performance-r

Our approach to this research problem was, in a sample of dairy enterprises for

empirical investigation, first to determine which farm characteristics exhibited

the most dramatic changes in 1990-2001. The second objective was to find out

whether the current dairy sector in the region was homogeneous, or whether

producers differed substantially. Linking the historical and present farm charac-

teristics provided the third objective: to determine the impact of initial condi-

tions on current performance, structure and management. Addressing these ob- jectives contributes to (a) understanding the development of dairy enterprises in the last decade, with the aim of (b) projecting future developments in regional producers' structure and performance and (c) determining priorities in agricul- tural policies regarding different groups of producers.

To assess the variation among dairy enterprises, several characteristics were em-

ployed in cluster analysis for 2001 data (for example, EPSTEIN, 2001 use only

financial indicators; UZUN, 2002). Historical characteristics for 1990 were as-

sessed for each cluster. The pre-reform data gave insight into initial farm condi- tions; more recent data revealed the performance of Russian agricultural enter- prises after the 1998 financial crisis.

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows: the next section is a litera- ture review that helped build the research hypothesis on the relation between management, agricultural enterprise characteristics and performance; Section 3 describes the research method and data; Section 4 presents the results ordered by the three research objectives, while a discussion of conclusions in Section 5 finalises the paper.

2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: FARM ENVIRONMENT, STRUCTURE,