Under the influence of regional and local agro-climatic conditions, the lag in key socio-economic indicators from the average Russian level, a certain specialization of agricultural production with its own socio-economic features has developed in most of the subjects of the Non-Chernozem economic zone of Russia:
- considerable migration outflow of the population;
- low level of effective demand of the population for agricultural products;
- uneven system of population settlement, its compact concentration around civilizational centres of attraction;
- poor quality transport infrastructure and poorly connected territories;
- insufficiency of the state and municipal measures taken to create attractive conditions for attracting financial capital to agriculture and organizing territories with a special mode of doing business (agro-clusters using innovative technologies and concentrating small producers around large enterprises directly involved in joint production processes).
An indicator of a favourable territory for agricultural production is considered to be the availability of acreage for the entire range of crops, including sugar beets, corn for grain, sunflower for grain and soybeans. Such regions are the Oryol, Tula, Ryazan, Bryansk and Nizhny Novgorod regions, the Republic of Mordovia and the Chuvash Republic (Table 1).
Grain production remains a key product segment of the agro-industrial complex of the Non-Chernozem Zone. In the Tula Region, wheat reached 43.8% in the structure of sown areas of farms of all categories in 2016, in the Orel Region 39.7%, the Ryazan Region - 34.8%, the Kaliningrad Region - 32.2%, the Republic of Mordovia - 29.3%, the Chuvash Republic - 28.9%, the Nizhny Novgorod Region - 27.4%.
Wheat, rye, barley and oats are grown in all agricultural regions of the Non-Chernozem Zone. The largest barley crops are in the Vologda Region - 20.5%, the Republic of Mordovia - 19.4%, the Ryazan Region - 19.1%.