Status and Directions for Improving the Use of Agricultural Labor Resources in the Region

Abstract

The Republic of Tatarstan is a successfully and dynamically developing region of the Russian Federation, which has a huge economic potential, including human capital, and favorable conditions have been created for the development of entrepreneurship. To date, the republic fully meets the internal needs of the region for milk, meat, grain, sugar by more than 300%, and for vegetable oil, food security indicators exceed the normative values by more than 6 times. However, sanctions pressure from the US and Western countries, political and economic instability have a negative impact on agribusiness, both in Russia as a whole and in its individual regions. The agrarian sector of the economy has to solve large-scale problems associated with forcing the modernization of the industry, import substitution, which implies the availability of highly qualified personnel designed to ensure the implementation of the sustainable development strategy and increase the competitiveness of agricultural producers. An assessment of the provision of agricultural production with labor resources for 2016-2021 indicates a decrease in the number of people living in rural areas, decreased by 12.9 thousand people. due to the migration of the able-bodied population to cities and a decrease in natural growth. Today, the region’s agriculture is experiencing a shortage, both in industry specialists and workers in ordinary professions, and there is an aging of workers in the agricultural sector. Only a third of the graduates of agricultural universities are ready to return as young specialists to agriculture. Low wages, low prestige and unaesthetic labor in the industry, low provision of basic social benefits, and other factors depopularize agricultural labor and reduce its attractiveness. Despite this, the level of labor productivity tends to increase, which is due to the technical and technological modernization of the main branches of agriculture of the Republic of Tatarstan, the most complete use of the biological potential of crop varieties and livestock breeds, and the rational use of labor resources. At the same time, natural and climatic conditions remain the determining factor in the productivity of labor in crop production. Due to unfavorable natural conditions in 2021, the commodity producers of the republic received less than 37% of crop production. Wages in the agricultural sector remain one of the lowest compared to other sectors of the economy. Multivariate correlation-regression analysis showed that the level of labor productivity in the industry is largely determined by the labor supply of agricultural units.