Agricultural development is an essential condition for the balanced socio-economic development of any region. The level of development in the agricultural sector impacts food security of the population in the given region, while the quality of agricultural output and the price level affects the standard and the quality of living of the population. The link between the level of agricultural development and socio-economic development of rural areas is important. On the one hand, well-developed agriculture preserves rural areas, contributes to job creation in rural areas and helps develop social rural infrastructure. On the other hand, human capacity of agriculture depends on the socio-economic development of rural areas. There are significant variations in agriculture among different regions. Industrial regions often have unfavourable conditions and factors for agricultural development, which is especially evident in mining areas with a specific demographic situation, unfavourable environmental conditions, low interest of business in the development of agriculture. This article uses a case study of the Kemerovo region–Kuzbass to analyze the peculiarities of agricultural development in the coal mining area. The article gives the basic indicators characterizing agricultural development, assesses the adverse limiting factors for agricultural development, assesses the implementation of agricultural functions in the industrial region and highlights the main prospects for agricultural development in the Kemerovo region–Kuzbass.

-The subject matter of this research is the processes of clustering in the regional economics. Currently, clustering is the most efficient form of conducting the innovative activity. For industrial regions, such as the Kemerovo region, the benefits of clustering comprise the creation of an efficient production scale rise. The purpose of this article is to study the ways to create the integrated tools formations in the industrial region. In addition, clustering advantages are imposing a qualitatively new impetus onto the development of the economics as a result of a mutually beneficial relationship emerged between industry and research organizations, universities, innovative businesses and the public sector. The paper concludes that development in the region of several cluster formations can provide the effect of the emergence of functioning of the entire regional economics. The effect in question is caused by the fact that the sum of potentials of the individual elements of the regional economics is less than the total capacity of a cluster in which these elements interact with each other. This feature provides for a number of advantages of regional economies considered in this article. In addition, the authors have identified problems that have a negative impact on the development of the innovation sphere of an industrial region.

The key role of investment and innovation activities of coal industry enterprises in improving the environmental safety of regions specializing in coal mining is substantiated in the article. The coal industry enterprises are recognized by the world scientific community as the absolute leader in the field of negative impact on the environment and industrial production waste generation. In this regard, one of the most important tasks of increasing the investment and innovation activities of coal companies, the introduction of modern technologies should be not only an increase in labor productivity and production efficiency, but also a reduction of anthropogenic impact on the environment. Despite the obviousness of the presented thesis, the trends characterizing the coal industry as the most inert and low-innovative sphere, which follows the path of extensive development, continue to dominate. The insignificant increase in investments in fixed assets, periodically followed by a recession, the reduction of trapped and neutralized air polluting substances, the lack of demand for innovations in the coal industry, as well as their low impact on ensuring compliance with modern technical standards, procedures and rules, bear evidence of low responsibility of business entities and inefficient measures of state economic policy in the field of improving environmental safety in the commodity-dependent regions.