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Russian Gumption |
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| The farms sitting on opposite hills in the
rolling Kursk countryside demonstrate the changes typical of the split in Russian
agriculture: on the first hill sits a huge cattle barn, feed storage sheds, treatment
facilities, and corrals; all common structures of an old collective farm. The adjacent
hill supports the homestead of Victor Kalutsky's private farm: a simple three-room home
and some sheds. Motioning with a nod towards the more opulent set-up of his neighbor, Kalutsky says, "They think I'm crazy to work so hard." The collective farm still receives subsidies and employs many workers who observe an eight-hour workday. Kalutsky is solely responsible for keeping his farm profitable, a task he works at 24 hours a day. Kalutsky must fix his tractors, buy, and build everything himself. And there is another significant contrast: Kalutsky does not use any herbicides or pesticides to slow the weeds or protect his crops. Largely from a personal aversion to chemicals, he chooses to run his farm organically. Despite the hard work and lack of subsidies, the small farm appears to be gaining ground. Last year, EkoNiva, a not-for-profit organic farming agency, formally certified the farm as organic according to international standards. At the same time, Kalutsky is steadily increasing the size and capacity of his farm to world scale. The size of a typical American farm is 2,500 acres. From his 25-acre plot in 1989, Kalutsky has extended his holdings to 1,200 acres. To work the land, he employs the help of eight farm hands. His equipment now includes three combines, eight cultivators, and six tractors. This is no subsistence farm. Indeed, Kalutsky is nearing his goal of working on an "American" scale with adequate, modern machinery. But despite the farm's history of growth and progress, Kalutsky cannot reach his goals by himself. The road to a secure future holds many hurdles. The most fundamental of these is a typical problem for a Russian farmer working private land: a desperate shortage of cash. Kalutsky needed to find international markets for his organic products, which do not sell well in Russia. EkoNiva is helping by finding a buyer for Kalutsky's buckwheat this summer in the profitable Western European market, resulting in the farm's first international sale. EkoNiva receives about 10 percent of its funding from the Farmer-to-Farmer Program through a subcontract to help administer volunteer assignments. The Farmer-to-Farmer Program is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and administered by Winrock International. This FTF assistance is also helping to establish and promote a Russian organic movement. EkoNiva develops organic food supplies by consulting and certifying, and has inspectors to advise farmers, run seminars, and certify farms. Farm evaluations are then sent to a German partner organization, Naturland, so that the farms receive an internationally known certification. EkoNiva also works to develop and increase a domestic market for organic products grown by Russian farmers, and maintains ties to organic buyers in Western Europe. The decision to become an organic farmer requires a degree of personal confidence, considering the time-intensive techniques involved in this type of farming, and the current lack of interest for these goods on the Russian market. Urie Vasukov, director of EkoNiva, says that Russia has almost no market for organic produce, and there isn't a single factory in Russia for processing organically grown buckwheat. So farmers must send it to a factory in Holland instead. "We cannot create an agricultural movement without developing a market," says Vasukov. "It will not develop on its own." EkoNiva provides crucial help by finding Western buyers for the Russian farmers. The agency, along with the Farm Ecological Cooperative ECOP, also is constructing an organic oat flakes factory in Kaluga, Russia. Through the advice of American volunteers of the Farmer-to-Farmer Program visiting the site in March 1996, the factory managers are learning how to run it at an internationally competitive level. Because of the growing interest in organic farming in the oblast, the Kurst administration plans to build several organic factories for buckwheat. While these plans unfold, Kalutsky continues to struggle with other hurdles, such as the lack of storage facilities on his property. He cannot make a profit on sales unless he can store his buckwheat and sell it off-season. Unlike the collective farm, he has no access to huge government-built grain elevators. Because interest rates for farmers are very high, getting a loan to build his own storage is almost impossible. Nevertheless, Kalutsky has a good start and relatively huge advantages, not the least of which is his drive and resourcefulness. His farm belongs to the first wave of private farms established before the political changes in 1991, when the government moved to place several programs to help farms. He obtained loans to acquire his equipment, and although he alone built his house and sheds, the government volunteered with essentials such as building a road and stringing an electricity line to the farm. When Kalutsky repaid his loans, he had three essentials seemingly out of grasp to so many farmers in Russia: machinery, land, and no debt. "Kalutsky's farm is a bright spot of success," says Stanislav Shulga, chief of the Kurst Ecology department. "If anyone can make it, he can." And Kalutsky's farm sits on some of the richest, most fertile farmland in Russia, the "black earth" belt, which stretches from Southern Russia through Ukraine, comprising one of the earth's largest breadbaskets. Winning the privilege to farm on such rich soil requires constant hard labor and some lucky breaks. However, Kalutsky will need still more breaks to see the fruit of his labor, in the form of capital, storage space, and finding markets for his grains. The help of USAID, Farmer-to-Farmer and EkoNiva may prove crucial by helping Kalutsky to sell to profitable Western markets. His small farm on the hill -- so fragile in comparison to the collective farm that dwarfs it -- may yet prove to be the more durable of the two. Kalutsky's farm, at least, proves that private farms can be commercially viable in Russia. *"Oblast" is the Russian equivalent of a province. |
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