The paper discusses the accelerated emergence of agroholdings in the Russian Federation. It is argued that the foundation of these highly integrated structures I due to the special (macro-) economic and institutional condition of the transition process in Russia. Moreover, it is shown that agricultural enterprises which are part of an agroholding were lacking behind other organisational forms in terms of economic efficiency. One reason for this finding is the highly centralized decision structures which, as experiences in Western Europe shows, are only suitable for very special agricultural value chains, but not for agriculture in general.