Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that suburban agricultural enterprises are becoming innovative ‘locomotives’ of rural development and form the epicenter of the agrarian and economic contradictions in contemporary Russia. The study aims at a comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of the scale, forms and branches of the suburban and urban agriculture in Russia, and at identifying the technological and social-ecological vectors of its development. The subject of the study is social transformations determined by the technological schemes and industrial-agricultural clusters in the suburban areas of Russian regions. The study combines methods of quantitative (statistical data, secondary analysis) and qualitative approaches (observations, semi-formalized expert interviews) within the case study. The results of the study include the typology of social transformations taking place in cities and their suburban areas with the intensive development of new agricultural practices and enterprises; the demographic characteristics of the employed in such industries; and the most important sectoral and institutional forms of urban and suburban agriculture. The paper concludes that the projects for the creation of new technologies and branches of agricultural production in suburban areas are not so much focused on the immediate commercial goals as motivated by the interests of establishing a system of smallscale agricultural ‘cells’ designed to provide urban families with quality local products. Such a diversification of food production can provide non-standard employment for citizens and increase their level of food security. The novelty of the study is determined by the analysis of the suburban phenomenon not as a reserve-serving territory but as a multifunctional social-economic entity capable of performing both economic-auxiliary and such non-standard functions as the production and organization of social-cultural phenomena in a special rural, social-ecological space. The paper provides some recommendations such as closer links between rural and urban food systems; and a system of special seminars and courses on the basis of agricultural universities in the interests of innovative agricultural enterprises in the suburbs.