Mapping Multistructural Rural Economy:Suburban and Peripheral Areas of the Tyumen Region
The article considers the geographical prerequisites for the development of multistructural rural economy. The authors use departmental statistics and the data of the Federal State Statistics Service to show the differences of social-economic landscapes in remote and close to centers rural areas. Such differences determine the domination of particular economic agents, and the specialization of rural areas by forms and sectors of agriculture. For instance, commodity production, agribusiness and private farms concentrate around the cities; here a suburban area of agriculture is developing supported by the pendulum migration; large enterprises are fully integrated in the formal market and win the competition for land resources, especially in grain production, while the farmers can benefit from the development of service industries or narrow economic niches. In the peripheral areas of the southeast, there are smallholdings, peasant farms and cooperatives. People use household plots and free land to develop dairy and meat husbandry, to grow potatoes and vegetables, and to produce honey. The owners of large household plots can be considered potential farmers, but due to the high institutional barriers they retain a semi-legal status. In general, settlements of the sub-region teeter on the edge of formal (cooperatives and peasant farms) and informal (smallholdings, secondhand dealers, etc.) economies. Large-scale enterprises can also work here, but usually they act as external players exploiting resources of the periphery and not taking care of local communities. However, the situation is not static, its vectors of development include economic and social risks associated with the gradual displacement of small and medium agricultural producers by large enterprises, and with the dependence of peripheral farms on the intermediary structures. At the same time, the multistructural economy creates new opportunities such as economic specialization of villages and diversification of rural economy. This research was conducted as a part of the complex research project of the Council of municipalities of the Tyumen region.