Proportionality of State Agricultural Support to the Economic Potential of Russia’s Leading Agricultural Regions

Abstract

When regional economies vary significantly in structure and budgetary capacity, state agricultural support can easily fall out of step with actual production outcomes. Most existing studies examine overall funding volumes and spending trends, but say little about how support is distributed relative to production performance across different regional groups. This gap hinders fair assessment of resource distribution and obscures underlying disproportions. This study focuses on key imbalances in the distribution of state agricultural support by evaluating its proportionality to the economic role and fiscal conditions of agricultural regions, and offers recommendations for improving the targeting and validity of support measures. The analysis draws on official data for Russian regions over the period 2012–2023. K-means clustering was applied to identify a leading cluster by average agricultural output. Findings show that the value of agricultural production within this cluster grew by 160.5 %, reaching RUB 4,195.8 billion, thus outpacing the national growth rate of 149.8 %. Meanwhile, state support grew by only 47.0 %, reaching RUB 81.6 billion. The support concentration coefficient remained stable at 1.06–1.08, suggesting that the relative distribution of support across regions was broadly preserved. Nevertheless, there is a deepening disproportion between agriculture’s economic significance and its budgetary priority: the sector’s share in gross value added rose from 11.6 % to 12.3 %, while the share of support expenditures declined from 3.2 % to 2.1 %, driving the proportionality coefficient from 3.59 to 5.95. Dependence on federal financing also declined, with the dependency coefficient falling from 4.16 to 2.43. These findings have practical implications for calibrating intergovernmental fiscal mechanisms and enhancing the targeting of state support for the agro-industrial sector.