Farming strategies regarding the production of collective goods in the Russian agricultural sector

This article discusses the fact that as Russian farms have been developing multifunctionalities since 1991 this has to be considered as a twofold strategy: the first goal being expand the activities of some institutionally selected enterprises and the second being to reproduce some "communities of interests". The primary observation highlights a characteristic fact: there are several "non-economic" functions carried out by farms that depend on their nature (type of ownership, size of the farm, etc). This analysis leads to the establishment of a link between the very nature of these functions and the existence of constraints and opportunities offered by the economic and social environment. Then, the concept of "productive configuration" is applied to study organization strategies used by several actors in the Orel oblast' and to identify four strategies organizing the relationship between food production and collective welfare creation, each configuration showing an institutional arrangement to secure the continuity and development of farms in a highly competitive context.