Agroholdings membership: does that make a difference in performance?

Comparing different organizational, managerial and economic indicators of the farms in two selected regions the study investigates whether agroholdings perform better and thus can be regarded as a promising organizational model for Russian agriculture. A comparatively poor performance of agroholdings' members in both regions implies that this organisational form suffers from principal management problems hampering the move of agricultural production towards efficient trajectories. The insights regarding the selection of agroholdings' members, farm restructuring, marketing activities and performance cannot however be simply transferred to Russian agriculture in general. In both regions analyzed the establishing of agroholdings was strongly promoted by the local government which induces a bias in the reason to integrate.