To the question of the institutional development mechanism of rural areas

The purpose of the research was to determine the influence of the institutional development mechanism of rural areas on the functioning of agricultural organizations. The systematization of social and economic elements of rural areas which are divided into institutions forming both labour resources and conditions for economic activity is proposed. Institutional factors include rural settlements, health care, education, social and engineering development, markets and financial and credit spheres. To estimate the level of development of agricultural organizations in the region, the development intensity index was used - the number of agricultural, hunting and forestry organizations per 10.000 countrymen. The conducted analysis of the institutional environment quality of rural areas of the Lipetsk region from the position of the resource approach revealed the following: the increase in wages is connected with the level of inflation; decrease of indices characterizing the resource availability of educational and health institutions; index increase of social and engineering development in rural areas; the strengthening of the institute of agricultural organizations and the financial and credit sphere is carried out through import substitution and state support measures aimed at the growth and differentiation of agricultural production and sustainable development of rural areas. To determine the presence and strength of the relationship between the analyzed indices, the Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated. The sufficiently high stability of the structure of rural settlements by the type of conformity of the quality of institutions and the development intensity of agricultural organizations proves one of the most important properties of the institutional environment - the complementarity of the elements: if its quality is low, on the whole, the individual elements of the environment, in particular, agricultural enterprises are poorly developed and vice versa. The conducted research showed the close dependence of the quality of the institutional environment and the development intensity of agricultural organizations. Since "point" measures do not provide significant positive results, the urgency of complex modernization of the institutional development mechanism of rural areas is growing. There is a necessity to develop special programs for the institutional environment development which will make it possible to move to a new stage in the development of its institutions, including agricultural organizations.