Structural and financial risks of land capitalization: lessons of domestic history

The article is devoted to the problem of the relationship between expected results and real institutional, structural, and financial consequences of agrarian reforms aimed at the capitalization of land. The purpose of the publication is to summarize the positive and negative experience of the peasant reform of 1861 on changes in the relations of ownership and land use in the budgetary and financial sphere and foreign economic activity. Research is based on the history-institutional methodology using tools of economic comparability, retrospective analysis, and historical reconstruction. It is defined that the opening of the land market and the creation of a system of mortgage land loans allowed to increase the share of private land ownership of peasants, but did not turn them into effective owners and did not solve the problem of peasant land. Rising land prices contributed to the development of land speculation and increased rents, encouraging the farmers to predatory land use and depletion of soils without increasing productivity. The capitalization of land and the expansion of the hired labor market contributed to economic growth, increased government revenues and expenditures, and overcame the chronic state budget deficit. At the same time, the credit indebtedness of peasants grew, while ransom payments depleted peasant farms, reducing the potential for capital formation and investment. The public policy of forcing grain exports and supporting large agribusiness allowed to replenish the gold reserves of the treasury, but also led to the impoverishment of farmers, reduced quality of the exported grain, increased share of fodder crops, and lower share of food crops and finished goods. Intensified international competition to expand the supply of cheap grain led to lower prices, weaker competitive position of domestic exporters, and the growing dependence of the economy on world markets for agricultural products, and the local agrarian business - on foreign capital. The article provides recommendations to the government about taking into account the historical experience in the implementation of modern agrarian transformations, in particular, comprehensive support for farming as the main link of agricultural production and the guarantor of food security of the country. Their implementation will help prevent the risks of over-concentration of land, the proletarianization of the peasantry and its mass migration to cities and abroad, growing environmental problems, and vulnerability of the economy due to increasing dependence on the world markets for agricultural raw materials. The publication was prepared based on the results of the research "Evolution of foreign economic relations of Ukraine (second half of the XVII - beginning of the XXI century)" (¹ DR 0116U004418).