Initially taken as a template for farm restructuring after the demise of collective agriculture, the ‘Western family farm model’ has taken root in the former Soviet countries only belatedly and incompletely. We examine dairy structures in Russia and Kazakhstan and analyse the drivers of recent herd growth. We are specifically interested in the role of farm management and organisation, vertical integration, and the role of policy. Regression analysis based on a sample of 180 randomly selected commercial dairy farms, using an innovative simultaneous equation framework, shows that better herd management and access to milk marketing contracts were more effective in stimulating herd growth than current subsidy payments. We do not find evidence that milking plants belonging to corporate entities or even supra-regional agroholdings grow more substantially than medium-sized individual farms. Twenty-five years after the end of central planning, structural change among commercial dairy farms in Russia and Kazakhstan appears similar in many ways to the patterns observed in the West more recently: smaller farms catch up in terms of herd growth and classical family-run operations coexist with or even emulate vertically integrated agribusinesses based on hired labour. In moving toward this ‘new normal’ of farming structures, commercial dairy farms in Russia may even be a few steps ahead of their Western counterparts. At the same time, the still sizeable but stagnating group of subsistence producers in rural households finds no equivalent in the West.

中文翻译：

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俄罗斯和哈萨克斯坦奶业的牧群成长，农场组织和补贴

“西方家庭农场模式”最初被视为集体农业消亡后农场结构调整的模板，但在后来的苏维埃国家却只是迟来而又不完整地扎根。我们研究了俄罗斯和哈萨克斯坦的奶业结构，并分析了近期牛群增长的驱动因素。我们对农场管理和组织的作用，垂直整合以及政策的作用特别感兴趣。使用创新的联立方程框架对180个随机选择的商业奶牛场进行的抽样回归分析显示，与目前的补贴支付方式相比，更好的牛群管理和获得牛奶销售合同的方式在刺激牛群增长方面更为有效。我们没有证据表明属于公司实体甚至超区域农庄的挤奶厂比中等规模的个体农场增长更快。中央计划结束后的25年，俄罗斯和哈萨克斯坦商业奶牛场的结构变化在许多方面都与西方近来的模式相似：较小的奶牛场在牧群增长和传统家庭经营方面赶上了运营与基于雇佣劳动的垂直整合的农业综合企业共存，甚至模仿。在朝着这种“新常态”的农业结构迈进的过程中，俄罗斯的商业奶牛场甚至可能比西方的奶牛场领先几步。同时，在农村家庭中仍然规模庞大但停滞不前的维持生计的生产者群体在西方没有找到与之相当的群体。