Revisiting the systainable utilization of croplands in the private farms

In the course of the latest land reform, when redistributing agricultural lands between land owners and land users, some specific forms of economic management have emerged, namely the so-called Peasant Farm Holdings (PFH). To a large extent, the operational efficiency of PFH is defined by the chosen production specialization. The goal of this paper is to study the PFH operation of Belgorodskaya oblast in order to disseminate it in other regions of Russia. The study was made on the base of a comparative analysis of PFH operation within the range of 21 municipal districts, taking into account some factorial and performance criteria and agroclimatic regional assignment with the use of multivariative statistical analysis methods. It was revealed that most of the regions of the North-Western part of the Belgorodskaya oblast are notable for higher index sunflowers and grain-crops harvest grown on a smaller allocated arable acreage. The farm businesses, located in the South-Eastern part of the district and specialized on growing sugar beet, are unprofitable. Centrally located peasant farm holdings mostly focus on planting grain-crops and sunflowers, and these operations resulted in maximum profitability. Consequently, it was established that taking the Belgorodskaya oblast as an example, the peasant farms should locate arable acreage rationally, taking into consideration biological plant needs, agro-climatic zoning, territorial location of municipal regions, organizational-economic criteria, etc.