LEGAL REGIME OF FARM PROPERTY AS AN EFFECTIVE FORM OF AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITY IN THE CURRENT CRISIS CONDITIONS

Abstract

The article focuses on the legal aspects of farms’ activities related to the issue of their property separation. The author successfully emphasises the entrepreneurial legal nature of farms, and therefore the property basis of their activities is the key to their efficiency and achievement of the goal of generating profits for distribution among the members of the farm. It is the issues related to the property basis of farms that are at the heart of the qualitative legal regulation of the exercise of their rights and obligations by their members. The article traces the historical background of the existing problems and legal approaches to the legal regime of farm property. The author emphasises that it is precisely the legislative deformations on this issue that have led to the existing inaccuracies in the current state of legal regulation of farms. Various changes in approaches to the possible forms of activity of farms, which have gone through a difficult path of evolution from joint activity to a legal entity and a farm established by an individual entrepreneur, have not contributed to solving these problems. The article notes that the existence of two structures of мfarms: a legal entity and an individual entrepreneur determines the need to differentiate the legal regime of their property. After all, a legal entity requires separation of property from its founders, while the construction of an individual entrepreneur does not. The canons of civil law regarding the мdivision of liability between a legal entity and its members (founders), as well as the  separation of their property, are not properly reflected in the current version of the Law “On Farming”, despite the fact that they are constitutive differences between the functioning of a farm in the form of a legal entity or an individual entrepreneur. The author states that the current provisions of the special legislative act do not provide for any distinctive provisions related to the activities of farms - legal entities and farms established by an individual entrepreneur. And these differences are based on the criterion of property separation of the farm and its founder or members. The article notes that the law does not distinguish between the legal regime of property of farms with the status of a legal entity and those established by an individual entrepreneur. Incorrect regulation of the structure of the authorised capital of farms as one of the basic sources of their property causes further difficulties in the exercise by members of farms of their rights, which are corporate in nature. In practice, the structure of farms established by individual entrepreneurs also raises questions. The relations between the founder of the farm and its members are not properly regulated. It is concluded that this form of farming will be more effective in the form of a simple partnership with the pooling of иcontributions of the members of the partnership.