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Russian farms are classified into large and small agricultural businesses depending on both their volume of operations and organisational form. The article examines the development of these two groups of farms during the transition and their adaptation to the new market conditions. The effect of regional factors and agricultural policies on the changing farm structure is analysed. Government support policies are shown to have a pronounced large farm bias, which is inconsistent with a market economy. The relationship between large corporate farms and rural household plots is quantified. The partial productivity of land and labour is compared between corporate and individual farms. Comparative Economic Studies (2005) 47, 85–100. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ces.8100078

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How to assess the outcomes and effects of agrarian reform in Russia? This question has held the attention of agricultural economists during the last two decades. The debates predate the start of reforms, but they became particularly acute during the first years of reform, and continue to rage to this very day. The Russian literature often paints a negative view of reform outcomes. This opinion is vigorously upheld by Shut'kov (2012) and by Miloserdov and Miloserdov (2012), who mainly examine time series of agricultural output, areas of used (and unused) agricultural land, number of tractors, combines, and other farm machinery, and application of fertilizers. Comparing the pre-reform and post-reform series, the authors reach an unambiguous conclusion that the reform has negatively affected the development of agriculture: production declined, a large proportion of agricultural land was abandoned, cropped areas decreased, livestock headcount shrank, as did the machinery park and fertilizer application. These conclusions regarding agriculture's decline, based as they are on statistical data, are indisputable. Yet such analysis is strictly one-sided: it ignores the causes that have led to decline of production and resource use. More precisely, the reform is regarded as the only factor that can be blamed for these negative outcomes. The analysis ignores efficiency indicators, although efficiency improvement was one of the main aims of reform. Serova (2010) also analyzed the outcomes of reform, focusing in particular on the reasons for production decline in the early years of reform (price disparity, fall of family incomes and the resulting fall of food demand, low competitiveness of domestic producers in the local market, etc.). Serova also attempted to analyze the efficiency indicators before and after reform, but only crop and livestock yields were examined as measures of agricultural efficiency.