Modern trends in the development of plant production under agrarian crises

Abstract

Aim. To determine the consequences of the cyclic development in the agrarian sector and evaluate the shifts in the structure and the performance of plant production branches due to the course of the transformational and agrarian crises and inter-crisis periods, to disclose the specificities of anti-crisis regulation in the agrarian sector in the postwar time. Methods. Common scientific methods were applied, including historical and logical, dialectic and systemic analysis, theoretical generalization, analysis and synthesis, variation dynamics, comparison, grouping, indexing, and table methods. Results. The cyclic character of the development in the agrarian sector and its impact on plant produc- tion were studied, and the results demonstrated that agrarian crises are an imminent stage of this process, and their “trough” is a starting point to launch a new cycle. It was found that the prolonged nature of agrarian crises inhibited the restoration cycle so much that the temporal breaks with the cycles of previous periods decreased considerably, and the periods of their complete revolution shortened due to which the scientists distinguish just two phases of crises now instead of traditional four phases: recession and uprising. It was determined that during the transition to new forms of management, there was an obvious destruction of the material resources of plant production with the refusal to keep to the crop rotation order. Still, the redistribution of the land and their division into shares stimulated the organization of modern agrarian enterprises yet delayed the agrarian and land reforms considerably. Due to this factor and other reasons, agricultural plant production at the “trough” of the transformational crisis decreased twice. The analysis demonstrated that the restoration of plant production occurred 12 years after the institutional crisis, followed by its registered rise until the moment of the Russian aggression – up to 156 %, and the development of the industry was closely related to the cyclic character of the functioning in the agrarian sector in general. Due to military actions, the manufacture of plant products has been dropping rapidly for the past two years. It was found that the results of the basic year were achieved differently in terms of different crops: the results for grains, grain legumes, and technical crops were achieved only in 2008; for vegetables and potatoes – in 2000, the yield of sunflower constantly increased, even despite agrarian crises; the performance of sugar beet decreased more than four times in 2021; the results for fruit and berries did not match those of 1990. The main directions of restoring the agrarian resource potential and renewing the manufacture of plant products in the postwar period were suggested. Conclusions. Modern processes of agricul- tural production are subject to the cyclic character of development, the trends of which are clearly copied in the plant production development. It was proven that agriculture reached the level of 1990 by the production volumes only in 2019, and the specificity of its development lies in the fact that after a short descending trend, there was a transition to the ascending trend, improving the situation considerably, but it was often broken by the lower part (“trough”) of agrarian crises and local drops (every other year). It was found that the restoration of plant production after a deep institutional crisis was registered in 2011, and in the subsequent years, there was a clear copying of the tendencies in the development of agrarian crises, but in terms of different crops, the rises from the “trough” of the transformational crisis took place in different time periods. The evaluations confirm that in plant production, the “trough” of each subsequent agrarian crisis was higher than that of the previous one, but it was followed by the ascending trend of the production, the exception being the peak of 2021, followed by the dramatic drop, caused by the Russian aggression. It was empirically proven that the cyclicity in the manifestation of the agrarian crises is characterized by the follow- ing time periods: from 1990 to 1999 – 10 years, from 2000 to 2010 – 10 years, and there were two crises, five years long each, during the subsequent 10-year-long period. It was rationalized that the main factors of shorter time periods in the crisis manifestation are as follows: global climate change, smart technologies, and a failure to comply with scientifically grounded requirements of crop rotations, which conditioned the domination of export-oriented crops in the structure of areas under crop, etc. The priorities of the postwar restoration of the plant production industry were substantiated; among these, the time-urgent investment into the de-mining processes in agricultural fields and the quality restoration of the latter was highlighted, including the distribution of sustainable production practices, the introduction of moisture- and resource-efficient technologies, precision agriculture, smart-technologies, the measures aimed at minimizing the losses of agricultural products in the process of producing, storing the products and managing food wastes. There is a need to establish a system of reacting to the manifestations of crisis phenomena, which should be based on analytical evaluations and scientifically grounded predicted scenarios.