Integrated agricultural associations in Ukraine: current status and development prospects

Abstract

The current state of agricultural integrated associations in Ukraine is considered. Their significant distribution is analyzed, the variety of forms of integration in the developed countries of the European Union and the USA is investigated, their crucial importance in ensuring food security of the country and significant contribution to international trade is proved. The experience of forming vertically integrated structures in agro-industrial complex is considered. It is proved that the creation of vertically integrated structures in the agro-industrial complex solves the problem of food security of the coun-try, increases food exports, reduces disparities between industries, optimizes price chains from agricultural producers to the final consumer. Attention is drawn to the relevance of the study of the cooperation current state in rural areas in terms of promoting its revival, including: legal requirements for the formation of a diversified agricultural economy as a basis for rural man-agement, farms development, agricultural cooperatives and other relatively new organizational forms of agricultural entre-preneurship. Since currently the state does not have enough funds to establish a wholesale market, it is advisable to create alternative, small organizational forms of wholesale sales in rural areas. This may be cooperation in the field of procurement and marketing of agricultural products. Such cooperatives are designed to perform certain marketing functions. Peculiarities of domestic and foreign integrated formations development, motivation of direct participants to joint production-economic and marketing actions, coordination and carrying out of joint economic, scientific-technical policy, formation of regional economic complexes are generalized. The advantages and disadvantages of cooperation among other organizational and legal forms, as well as the advantages and disadvantages provided by agricultural holdings to agricultural producers are considered. The generalization of the conducted researches gave the chance to investigate motivation of the basic partici-pants, ways of realization of integration processes in market conditions. Key words: integration, integrated formations, integration processes, investments, innovations, investment climate, cooperation, agriculture, market infrastructure, diversification, associations, argoholding.