Theoretical Foundations of the Functioning of Personal Peasant Farms

The purpose of the study is to develop theoretical and methodological provisions on the functioning of private peasant farms. The production of agricultural products in individual peasant farms should be considered as a manifestation of the protective reaction of the rural community to the negative effects of institutional changes in society, the insufficient level of development of productive forces of the state, which makes it impossible to fully provide food products to the population due to high-value production and low purchasing power of the population. The use of Western standards of division into a private peasant and farm based on the large amount of income from sales, agricultural holdings and land use in the current economic conditions of Ukraine is also not feasible. We believe that in the event of their introduction, most OSGs will acquire the status of a farm, which will result in a corresponding increase in tax pressure. The evolution of the functioning of individual peasant farms proves that during the whole period of existence OSG tried to minimize their formal relations with the state. The root cause of these circumstances was an ambiguous attitude of the authorities to their activities, where the ideological beliefs and unpredictability of their activities are motivating. We consider that the category of "private peasant economy" is appropriate to be interpreted as a "private subsidiary" - a type of agricultural activity of households concentrated in villages and settlements, which has no entrepreneurial direction and is characterized by the following features: the purpose of production - self-provision of food products, with the sale of the remainder of the resulting agricultural products; in the conditions of economic stability - an element of secondary, and during periods of economic troubles - basic employment and is not the main source of the formation of the total resources of the rural household; for the production of agricultural products, the work of household members is used. In the conditions of economic growth, the role of OSG in providing food to the population of Ukraine will be lost. In these conditions, the share of income from OSG in the structure of the total resources of the rural household will decrease, which will create conditions for their transformation into "hobby-farm".