Complex assessment of plant growing development in regions of Ukraine to work out recommendations for institutional changes in agriculture

This article deals with the prospects and trends of crop production development in Ukraine, as well as the methods and ways of supporting this industry by the state.According to the article, the primary objective of the state is to create conditions through the reallocation of resources and facilitate the introduction of new forms of economic activity in the regions, which are depressed in terms of agriculture today.It is noted that to justify the need for institutional changes in crop production we must take into account the appropriate specifics of agricultural production in some areas.The article reports that, a large number of similar types of agricultural enterprises, unlike in other sectors of the economy, allow us to group the results of their activity: in terms of forms of management, on a territorial basis or according to other types of features for further comparative analysis.Therefore, the article offers the crop production regions clustering in certain areas, to determine which areas need the state aid priority.It is noted that in terms of crop production it is possible to increase the efficiency of agricultural activity due to a better use of agricultural land, as well as by an increase in average crop yield per 1 hectare. Therefore, it is offered to use the integral index of crop production position of each region, based on the ratios of extensive and intensive load.The extensive load factor represents the degree of agricultural land use.The intensive load factor reflects the effectiveness of land fund usage, that is, the average yield, which is produced from the agricultural land of the same region. However, the average yield cannot directly serve as the basis for calculation, because the structure of the sown area of each region is heterogeneous.In this study, while calculating the intensive load factor, it is offered primarily to carry out the procedure of yield rate normalization for each group of crops separately.Using the method of integral estimation of crop development, the autor has made an appropriate ranking of Ukraine regions according to the area of sown crops in Ukraine, based on which 4 sectors of Ukraine areas have been allocated and grouped by crop production development level.The article goes on to give the recommendations for decision making supporting investments and state aid for each of the selected sectors to further develop crop production in the regions of Ukraine.