The article studies the peculiarities of functioning of rural households, the substantiation of strategic scenarios for their development and the development of an effective mechanism for strengthening their role in the formation of agri-food resources of Ukraine.
Taking into account the current state of the agricultural sector and real conditions of rural households existence, several alternative ways of their development are defned: individual (independent) development; integration of rural households with agricultural and processing enterprises; cooperation with other rural households and with small businesses.
The analysis of the structure of agricultural production in terms of rural households that can be consumer oriented, consumer – production oriented and production oriented allows us to conclude that a long-term development of rural households will lead to a change in their commodity proposal. The results of the design analysis of the average growth rates of all three resource components showed: the average annual growth rate of labour remuneration - 24.3%; average annual growth rate of fnancial assistance - 21.5%; average annual growth rate of rural household income - 14.6%; the average annual growth rate of total revenues (resources) - 18.7%.
Having used the statistical package "STATGRAPHICS",we analyzed the tendencies of decrease of incomes share of rural households from own labor and capital; as well as growth of incomes from hired labor. Having used the ARIMA model, we made a forecast until 2025, and found that the share of population incomes from rural households will decrease to 20.2%. However, the decrease in income from own labor and capital should be offset by an increase in income from remuneration of labor received in the real sector of the economy.
In addition, the share of gross output of households in the total gross output of agriculture is calculated. The Brown model (exponential smoothing model) with the parameter alpha = 0.3639 was used for the forecast. According to the results of calculations, it can be concluded that in the future the share of gross agricultural output will decrease and may reach 35.7% by 2025.
Today it is also obvious that production oriented rural household, in conditions of increase of marketability level and effective mechanisms for the sale of manufactured products, can be the base for the development of entrepreneurship in agricultural production. This can be created through the organization of a system of purchasing manufactured products from the population, or through the organization of a system of consumer cooperation. Based on this, we believe that the development of land mortgage lending is important to meet fnancial resources needs of small agricultural producers in Ukraine, to achieve maximum economic effect from the realization of land potential, and as a result, to reduce risks in agricultural production.
The mechanism for solving this problem, to our opinion, is the creation of mortgage funds of entity at the state level or at the level of united territorial communities.
Key words: rural household, incomes of rural households, family farms, rural territories, mortgage lending, cooperation.