The article deals with the modern features of methodological justification of the results of agro-economic research. The author emphasizes, from the systemic point of view, the leading role of systemic analysis in the investigation of key factors of the agricultural development, and provides an example of negative impact of methodological shortcomings on practical results.

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The author justifies the necessity of the state support of the agriculture on the basis of its social significance, and provides an assessment of the current support mechanisms and their efficiency. She proposes measures to raise the efficiency of the use of budget funds in the agrarian sector in regard to their limited character

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The authors consider the adaptation of the system of budget support and management of the public finance in this country’s agrarian sector to the WTO requirements. They justify the necessity of qualitative transformations of the institutional environment for the support of agriculture and concrete measures for its improvement. The article proposes a mechanism to adjust the distribution of the state’s financial resources for the agriculture based on the indicators of social utility and comparative advantages of the agrarian enterprises in the context of the WTO requirements and modern experience of the Western managerial systems

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The article reveals the opportunities and key factors of the increase of farming households’ incomes by way of their implementation in the market agro food system. Typical households groups have been excreted on the basis of socio-demographic characteristics. It was ascertained that the current socio-economic policy is not able to solve the problem of rural poverty. As a result, more than half of the families with children, who shape the future of the Ukrainian village, belong to the poorest households. Therefore, the authors justify the need of a policy to support the incomes of rural families in order to improve their commercialization. Using the statistical method of grouping and matching, the authors identified various key factors of the commercialization of agricul-tural activities of selected social groups of rural households and their economic effect, which is increasing the incomes from the sale of agricultural products. It was estimated that the highest effect for improving welfare of the poor rural households can be achieved through increasing land in use (extensive method) or raising technical and technological and innovation support (intensive method) of the households agricultural activity. The calcula-tions confirm the highest income increase is possible with the joint effect of the two factors, which requires the increase in the land area in use up to 2 ha and annual expenditures on agricultural activities, within the techno-logical feasibility, in the amount of UAH 2-3 thousand. The authors suggest to provide the necessary level of expenditures though the implementation of targeted state support for selected household groups over a period of up to 5 years in exchange for their guaranty to improve the level of commercialization.

Keywords:private peasant farm, agrarian activities, market orientation, factors of commercialization

The author proves that the growth in Ukraine's agrarian sector is followed by a market concentration with a small number of powerful agro-industrial corporations controlling a considerable part of this country's agro-food system. At the same time, the small producers and processors have a weak market power and are crowded out from the profitable markets. The article shows that the conceptual approaches to the solution of this problem are based on the search for ways to their integration, on a parity basis, into the chains of value added existing in the corporate sector. The author justifies that agro-industrial chains – are not only interrelated links of the production process, but, first of all, mu-tually beneficial ties between groups of producers, sellers, processors and service companies, who unite in order to increase productivity and create value added based on the understanding of mutual profit and fair distribution of the obtained results. Those objectives could be attained through better economic coordination and institutional innovations. Research on the agro-food chain makes it possible to assess the relations between all actors and promotes the understanding of all possible economic and social profits and losses for all its participants.
The article describes various case studies on the development of mutually beneficial relations in the production of pork and fruit and berries, which testify that the establishment of ties between small commodity producers and the enterprises of the agro-food industry based on common agro-food chains guarantees for the latter a sustainable development of their business, and for the rural households – technological modernization and access to profitable markets. Among the small commodity producers, the first to integrate in the chains of value added are those commercial farms, which are innovatively oriented and capable of overcoming mistrust and risks.

Keywords:corporate sector, agro-food chains, small commodity producers, rural households, agro-food corporations

The interdependencies among land use systems at national and international levels motivate the development of global land use models facilitating the analysis of the trends of plausible future land use under the conditions of increasing population and climate change for environmental and food security purposes. Computational complexity of such models limits the land use projections to aggregate levels which give no clue regarding the potentially critical local heterogeneities. Improving these projections at fine resolutions requires new methods of systems analysis for integrating land use models at different scales. For that purpose, we have proposed a dynamic cross-entropy based probabilistic downscaling model which facilitates to obtain future aggregate land use projections from global models (e.g. GLOBIOM) to finer resolutions. The proposed procedure allows incorporating data received from different sources, such as satellite images, statistics, and expert opinions, as well as data from global land use models.
Using downscaling procedure, we estimate future impacts of global climate changes on the land use in Ukraine (on the rayon level) in accordance with the aggregated results of GLOBIOM modeling. They indicate some growth of pressure on land resources in Ukraine associated with the satisfaction of the increasing global demands for foods and biofuels. On the one side, the model forecasts a small growth of demand (0.2%) for arable land by the middle of the XXI century. At the national level, it doesn't pose any serious threats, but, on the case regional level, it can lead to certain ecological risks (in the oblasts with an extremely high share of arable land). On the other side, the model also predicts some growth of the demand for forests, including SRF, and pastures. These changes could have some positive effect by supporting safety and sustainable land use in Ukraine.
Further investigations will be oriented to comparing the results of modeling based on different available maps of land cover and land use (GLC2000, MODIS2000, GLOBCOVER2000) and to estimating the land demand under different scenarios of agriculture improvements (technology, management etc.).

Keywords: land use, modeling, aggregated data, downscaling

The authors provide a socioeconomic assessment of the processes that have taken place in rural areas and the agricultural sector after the establishment of Ukraine's political independence. They reveal the controversial nature of agrarian reforms resulted in the unnecessarily polarized dual structure of agriculture and the divergence between agricultural and rural development.
In agriculture, a division of activities between different groups of producers took place. Growing the high tech export oriented crops together with the profits from trading them were monopolized by the agricultural holdings. The marginally profitable production of labor-intensive products was concentrated in private farms, which are the most numerous representatives of the underdeveloped family-style farming. All that has restricted the resources for economic and social development of rural communities and led to a situation in which, with the growth of agricultural output, the rural areas are degrading.
The article shows that the Ukrainian village remains a scene of social reforms in three areas: agriculture, social services and local government. Its future will greatly depend on how well the process of reform will ensure the priority interests of rural community and the general public over the commercial goals of big business.

Keywords: agricultural policy, agrarian reform, the dual structure of agriculture, rural employment, rural infrastructure, rural development, reform of local government

The authors provide a socioeconomic assessment of the processes that have taken place in rural areas and the agricultural sector after the establishment of Ukraine's political independence. They reveal the controversial nature of agrarian reforms resulted in the unnecessarily polarized dual structure of agriculture and the divergence between agricultural and rural development.
In agriculture, a division of activities between different groups of producers took place. Growing the high tech export oriented crops together with the profits from trading them were monopolized by the agricultural holdings. The marginally profitable production of labor-intensive products was concentrated in private farms, which are the most numerous representatives of the underdeveloped family-style farming. All that has restricted the resources for economic and social development of rural communities and led to a situation in which, with the growth of agricultural output, the rural areas are degrading.
The article shows that the Ukrainian village remains a scene of social reforms in three areas: agriculture, social services and local government. Its future will greatly depend on how well the process of reform will ensure the priority interests of rural community and the general public over the commercial goals of big business.

Keywords: agricultural policy, agrarian reform, the dual structure of agriculture, rural employment, rural infrastructure, rural development, reform of local government

In the evolution of agrarian relations, increasing the output usually dominates over other socially important functions of the agriculture, such as social- economic and environmental ones. However, by means of certain political decisions, many countries have achieved harmonious combination of the interests of agriculture and village, as growth in agriculture entails not only the positive effects of increasing amounts of food, but also leads to undesirable results, which worsen the quality of public life.
In modern scientific circulation and political practice, the term of "agrarian/rural devel-opment" is used, where growth is considered not as the ultimate goal but a means to ensure development. The reconstructive type of development in the agricultural sector involves transformation of the paradigm of national agricultural system oriented to industrialized (industrial) agricultural production towards better understanding of its multiple structure and nature. As agriculture, unlike industry, is directly related to wildlife and humans, the economic activities in rural areas cannot be considered outside the general system of its social relations and environmental opportunities.
The reconstructive type of agrarian development can ensure the implementation of the essential features and advantages of domestic agriculture and rural areas based on socio-economic modernization. The process of such modernization involves a transition from the superficial alteration of only external form of agricultural structures who monopolize the natural resources to expand the output of exportable raw materials over changing the core of agrarian relations in order to create real opportunities for their reconstruction.
The proposed set of economic, social, cultural, political, and other changes aims at providing an agricultural and rural development based on sustainability. On the one hand, this requires streamlining the economic activities and social responsibilities of the large sized agrarian businesses in terms of public interest (economic, social and environmental). And, on the other hand, it involves building long-term capacity of rural communities to independently develop rural economy (using local resources), and improve social conditions and the environment of their life.
The nature of socio-economic modernization of the agricultural sector in the context of its transition over the reconstructive development type is manifested in different countries depending on the achieved level of economic, democratic and institutional development. In less developed and developing countries, the discussion on the transition from the policy of sectoral development over the comprehensive approach (that is, an adequate multi-sectoral coordination of local activities) mostly appears in theoretical terms, and much less in practice. In our opinion, in countries with low overall development and with obvious signs of destructive growth, which, unfortunately, include Ukraine, the urgency of real action in the field of socio-economic modernization will sharply rise as soon as in the near future.
This article was prepared within the Ukrainian NAS's target oriented comprehensive research program on "Reconstruction of Ukraine's Economy: Historical Challenges and Modern Projects".

Keywords: agrarian transformation, agrarian structure, agricultural growth, rural development, socio-economic modernization, reconstructive development

This paper provides an analysis of the trends in agricultural land use and land concentration in the EU. Land grabbing, a new emerging trend in the EU, is in the focus. The authors argue there is an exclusion of agricultural lands from local and rural development, and from agriculture, while agrarian investments fail to meet the principles for responsible investments.
The paper aims to examine and summarize the factors that drive agricultural land concentration and grabbing in the EU, and define the extent of these processes and their consequences.
The authors show that the European and national legislations fail in preventing negative consequences of agricultural land concentration and grabbing, and in ensuring the priority of family farms as a basis of the EU agrarian system. The analysis focuses on such drivers of these processes as significant difference in land prices, speculations, emerging and strengthening corporate sector in the agriculture, imperfection of the EU sectoral policies and conflicts between them and between their instruments.
The analysis confirms that increasing number of large-scale land contracts, monopolizing control over agricultural lands, and structural changes in land use decrease the viability of both agricultural sector and rural areas. The land grabbing leads to replacing the family farming model with industrial farming and large corporate enterprises usually established with participation of international capital. The above mentioned phenomena threaten the European agrarian system, sustainable and multifunctional agriculture, food security, and environment.
The authors prove the necessity of an integrated and differentiated approach to deal with agricultural land concentration and grabbing due to the variable nature of the underlying factors.

Keywords: agricultural land concentration, agricultural land grabbing, EU common agricultural policy, family farms, corporatization of agriculture

Based on extended interpretation of the essence of farming, the article outlines the boundaries of the farming segment in Ukrainian agriculture. This farming segment includes not only registered farms, but also those households, which meet the global farming criteria. The authors estimate the number of the households (personal peasant farms) of farmer type and their productive potential and prove that one of the top priorities in improving the mechanism of state support for farming is encouraging the households to institutionalize (formalize) their agricultural activities.
It is proposed to introduce a five-year program to provide financial assistance to the households (personal peasant farms) in order to expand the scale of their current agricultural output, to start new activities, and to increase the level of commercialization and subsequent formalization in the regulatory environment. The main provisions of the program were developed, such as the requirements for potential beneficiaries and the results of their participation in the program; conditions for the allocation and use of support funds; estimated number of participants; the need for budget financing etc. According to calculations, during the program period, it will involve 75 thousand households, who, after fulfilling all the stipulated conditions, will join the farm segment.

Keywords: state support, households, business plan, personal peasant farms (PPF), state support program, farmers potential, formalization of PPF activity

The article considers the essential features of rural development as a multi-vector process, which not only involves economic growth in rural areas, but also requires its adaptation to human behavior, social and political structure of rural communities and their involvement in development processes. It also reflects systemic positive changes in rural areas, which are initiated "from bottom" and supported "from top". In this concept of rural development, inclusiveness is inherent.
The authors show that the development of the concept of "inclusive rural development" took place in the process of enrichment and specification of the theoretical concepts of sustainable development, inclusive growth and inclusive development in relation to the rural sector of society. This concept denotes a development whose result consists in the creation of proper conditions for the rural population for such purposes as: the use of land and other local resources in the economic activities; adequate distribution of the results of economic growth in the agriculture and other sectors of the rural economy; and participation in social and public life for the consolidation of communities and observance of human rights. Such development leads to the reduction of poverty, overcoming the economic, social and political exclusion of people residing in rural areas.
It is pointed out that ensuring the inclusive development is a function of the state regulation of national economy. To implement it in Ukraine, it is necessary to ensure, first of all, the implementation, in the regulatory and legal framework, of the global goals of sustainable development and the objectives for their achievement. That could be realized by adopting the Law on the Strategy for Sustainable Development until 2030, and, in the part of inclusive rural development, also the Law on the Basic Principles of the State Agrarian Policy and State Policy of Rural Development.

Keywords: inclusiveness, economic growth, inclusive development, human rights, rural development, social inclusion, Goals of Sustainable Development

The article summarizes the experience of Latin American countries in the field of transforming land relations from the point of view of social justice, forming the necessary space for the livelihood of peasants, ensuring their economic sovereignty and so on. It has been proved that free access to the land resources and control over them largely determine the overall potential of the development of rural areas and the social development of the country as a whole.
Studies have revealed persistent trends towards biased land distribution in the Global South and over-concentration in the hands of dominant groups and large agricultural enterprises. It has a strong destructive effect on the overall development of the countries in the region and is reflected in unequal spatial development, systematic infringement of the rights of peasants, limiting employment growth, spreading poverty, destruction of social cohesion, destabilization of food systems at the local, national and global levels, emergence of armed conflicts, etc.
The general threats of changes in land tenure and use in Ukraine related to the tendency to redistribute land resources in favor of the corporate sector, land over-concentration and landlessness of peasants are outlined; a number of factors contributing to the unbalanced distribution of land were identified, and the necessity of including the lessons of Latin American countries in the future social development of Ukraine, in the long term is substantiated.

Keywords:transformation of land relations, spatial justice, concentration of land resources, small farms, corporate sector of agrarian production, personal peasant farms, land use

Based on the generalization and analysis of modern scientific and applied approaches and real results of land transformations in the last century in transition economies, the article reveals the essence of the nature of market and egalitarian land reforms, as well as their goals and general economic results. Egalitarian reform has as its main priority a rapid reduction of rural poverty and development of the new landowners’ skills to build their potential for its implementation in the general societal context.
Market-oriented land reform aims at economic efficiency of the market based allocation of resources to ensure the growth of export-oriented agricultural production. Egalitarian land reform focuses on human and the realization of his or her basic rights, while market land reform focuses on the economy.
Empirical data on land reforms in China show that their egalitarian nature was based on the creation of a society with equal opportunities of its members in the management of and access to land resources and material benefits obtained from them, and on ensuring a wide spread of the benefits from rural growth in society as a whole. Currently, China is the only country in the world that progressed from a "country of low human development" in 1990 to a "country of high human development" in 2018.
The author proves that the purpose of land reform cannot be primitivized to a simple division of land into plots for transfer to private ownership based on free market turnover. Guaranteeing basic human rights and achieving public welfare from a land reform are achieved not only via obtaining land in private ownership, but also via supporting these acts with a fair distribution of control over the production process. Imposing on society a pseudo-scientific concept that land is a commodity that, like an apartment, mobile phone or bag of feed, can be freely bought and sold on market at open auctions, which will consolidate the country's economic power would inevitably lead to even greater income polarization, violation of basic human rights and, consequently, to social confrontations and significant social upheavals.
The publication was prepared within research project on "Spatial justice in land use for sustainable development of rural areas" (State Registration No 0121U108142).

Keywords:egalitarian land reform, market land reform, land as a common good, land as a commodity, public welfare, basic human rights, control over production