| Biointensive Farming Takes Root in
Russia by Carol Vesecky Our Farmer-to-Farmer team included Albie Miles, a teacher of Biointensive and apiculture based at UC Santa Cruz; Darina Drapkin, now teaching English at a Waldorf School in St. Petersburg, Russia; and myself, Carol Vesecky, director of Biointensive for Russia. The program included basic seminars in Bryansk, Russia, near the border with Ukraine, and Novo-Sin'kovo, near Dmitrov, north of Moscow. Our mission was sponsored by Winrock's USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer Program. Bryansk, a city of about 200,000, is not far from Russia's border with
Ukraine. One-third of the Bryansk region received radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, a
situation which precipitated the founding of "Viola," a nonprofit organization
made up of teachers, doctors and students determined to educate the population on the
dangers of radiation and on methods of cleansing the body of radioactive substances.
Our workshop participants in Bryansk, numbering about 50, included Viola members, faculty and students of the agriculture and biology departments of the university, seven Forestry Academy faculty members, and biology teachers working with the Young Naturalist program. On the afternoon of the demonstrations held on the Young Naturalist Center's research garden plot, we had a full house of 65 biology teachers from all over the region for the introductory lecture. We presented Ecology Action's slide show, "The World Food/Land Situation and the Biointensive Sustainable Mini-Farming Solution," and lectures and discussions on: components of the Biointensive method, sustainability, diet and nutrition-based gardening, soil preparation and fertilization, irrigation techniques for areas with limited water access, pest and disease management strategies, the history of Biointensive agriculture, and garden planning. The smiles in the group picture attest to our workshop's success, as also do reviews written by many of the participants. Here's an excerpt from just one: "Thank you for the wonderfully structured reports... The enthusiasm and dedication of our American colleagues doubtless encouraged these same qualities in those attempting to assimilate the very interesting Biointensive method. The information we have received will be replicated many times in our own practice and in our lectures. We invite you to return; we'll be happy to see and hear you again." -Antonina S. Burenok, Dean and Professor Novo-Sin'kovo is located in a vast marshy plain that has been drained to grow various crops, from vegetables to grains. The lands of the Yakhromskiy State Farm and its college cover this plain, with the Educational Methodology Center (EMC) of Russia's Ministry of Agriculture situated close by. EMC serves 285 agricultural colleges in 71 regions of Russia with materials and short courses. New methods from abroad are researched and tested by the Foreign Relations and Marketing Laboratory, where our seminar was held. Our seminar participants included seven members of the Yakhroma State Farm College faculty as well as faculty from the Kaluga, Detchina, Kolomna, and Krasnoholm State Farm Colleges, who were able to join us thanks to travel funds donated by Biointensive for Russia supporters. Two faculty members from the All-Russian Agricultural Extension College in Sergiev Posad and one Moscow professor also participated, and eight local dacha gardeners and 47 agriculture students joined us at various times during the seminar. According to Albie, "most of the college instructors expressed their intentions of including the Biointensive method in their curricula," of experimenting with double-digging, and of "monitoring long-term effects and yield figures." In closing I quote from Darina's report: "People were impressed by, as they put it, 'our altruistic sharing of knowledge.' I was impressed by the younger generation of farming students -- by their avid interest and concern for the food situation and by the quality of the life they lead." Our experience in Novo-Sin'kovo deepened our own respect and understanding of the Russians, and rekindled our desire to continue working with them in the coming years to share the life-affirming, resource-conserving Biointensive method of growing food. For more than 20 years, Carol Vesecky has grown food for her family using Biointensive mini-farming methods as taught by the non-profit Ecology Action. In 1993, after coordinating translation, typesetting, and publication in Moscow of the Russian translation of How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons, she formed the organization Biointensive for Russia to share the Biointensive method with the people of the former Soviet Union. This is the second year that she has volunteered for the Farmer-to-Farmer Program.
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Russia Profile
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