Agricultural business in independent Ukraine: thirty-year dynamics of the reorganization process

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to identify stages in development and to analyze the content of transformation processes in Ukrainian agriculture for the period of 1991–2022 years. Methodology / approach. This research uses content analysis of legislative field to present basis for organization of agriculture business activity for the 30-years of restoration of Ukraine independence. Official statistical data are studied to reveal repercussion in productivity as an effect of Laws, Acts and Agreements implementation. Methods of regression and correlation analysis are used to unveil peculiarities in agriculture tendency. Hodrick-Prescott method is applied to extract structural components, exclude random impacts on economical processes and to find out significant changes or turnings in the sector development. Quantitative analysis results were obtained by the GNU Octave software tool. Results. Legislative evolution has influenced on the way of agriculture business organization and branch productivity. Analysis revealed two stages in its development. The first one (1991–1999) is the period of business transformation with changes of ownership forms on the land. This period is notable by its descending dynamics. Transformation has required to build relationships in business environment after collapse of Soviet Union, to supply with material and technical resources, to support its activity with financial funds. The essence of the first stage is in findings of an effective form of farming management. The second stage is the exit from the lowest point at which agrarian business was in 1999 and the gradual growth of its activity and profitability. This is the period of strengthening of relationships in the business environment, development of crop and livestock production, implementing of new technologies of land cultivation, plant, and animal care. It is the period of economic recovery on the base of private land ownership, motivation of producers’ activity, agreements on free trade and cooperation with the EU and other countries. Simultaneously, it is the years of overcoming of such shocking consequences as economic collapse of the end of 1990s, the instability of foreign currency and the banking crisis of 2008–2009, the beginning of the hybrid occupation of Ukraine by Russia in 2014, the rapid fluctuation of the value of its own currency in 2014–2015 because of war. The alteration of the principles of currency exchange rate formation with the transition from a fixed value to that is formed under the influence of market conditions was a mean to overcome this instability. Russia’s full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine since 2022 caused the latest devastating events in the economy. Originality / scientific novelty. The novelty of the obtained research results is in presentation, argumentation, and interpretation of productivity waves in agriculture development for the 30-years of Ukraine independency with the use of extract method of structural components and correlation analysis of smoothed data sets. The continuity of legislative stages of agriculture reorganization was built to reveal ground for agriculture growth and to understand factors of branch sustainability. It is the first time when research shows how to detect latent changes in the development in the context of legislative changes, external threats, and internal peculiarities of branch. Practical value / implications. Results of analysis can be implemented in the historical reconstruction of causes and consequences of falls and rises in the Ukrainian economy for the period of 1991–2022. Used smoothing method is suggested to be applied in econometric research when the dynamics of indicators behavior cannot be approximated with certain function unmistakably because of ambiguous form of data scattering or its latent character.