Eugenia Serova awarded Pyotr Stolypin “Agrarian Elite” prize

The XXII edition of the awards ceremony for the national prize named after Pyotr Stolypin - “Russia’s Agrarian Elite -2019” - took place on 17 April 2019 at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

The first Director of the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation Eugenia Serova received honors in the “Efficient Agricultural Policy-Maker” nomination.

A well-known agricultural economist, Professor Serova was one of the authors of the new Land Law in the former USSR in the 1980s. In 1991-1994, as Adviser to the Minister for Agriculture of the Russian Federation, she was part of the team that spearheaded agrarian reforms, the development of an appropriate regulatory framework, and the implementation of new agricultural policies.

In 1990-2000, she was an expert at OECD focusing on agricultural issues; she was involved in numerous projects of the World Bank, FAO, OECD, IFPRI and other international organizations. From 2007 to 2018, she held various high-level positions at FAO. Presently, Serova is the Head of the Institute for Agrarian Studies at the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics (HSE).

As noted by Alexander Fomin, President of the Foundation for the “National prize named after Pyotr Stolypin”, a person of science becomes an “effective agricultural policy-maker” in cases when ideas and recommendations proposed by the academic transform into legislative acts, government decisions, and specific large-scale projects.

By this criterion, Fomin added, Professor Serova had every reason to be nominated for the prize named after Pyotr Stolypin, an outstanding statesman, whose agrarian reforms in the Russian Empire amounted to the legitimization of private peasant land ownership.

In response, Eugenia Serova highlighted a remarkable development: today, as in the times of Stolypin reforms, it is recognized at government level that the people must be at the core of reform efforts to modernize and improve the efficiency of agriculture in Russia. The reforms should be targeting and benefiting the laborer, the doer – the peasant, and it implies, among other things, the necessity to train and educate young people so that they achieve high levels of qualification.