Russia's new farmers and their significance

A visit to Russia invokes several responses: awe for its complex history and significant achievements; deep appreciation for its rich literature and arts; shock at the tragedies that unfolded in the past, and trepidation for what the future holds. Post-Soviet Russia is a nation and society in the remaking. The Soviet past is sought to be qualified with a cautious eye and tone, and the post-1990s neo-liberalism, a time of bezzakoniye (lawlessness) that lasted until 2004 and which produced oligarchs (many now as expatriates) is seen as a time of disruption. With Soviet-era forms of welfare, especially for children and the elderly in the domains of health, education and housing, strengthened, there is an overall aura of economic well-being and prosperity that marks the major cities of Moscow and St Petersburg.

A nation in transition, a new nationalism seeks to challenge US-NATO hegemony and makes assertions for its own place in the new world order. The result is a complex national political-economy which its citizens negotiate with their rich repertoire of black humour, overt and covert forms of dissent, and multiple forms of social solidarities. Reflecting these trends is the new statuary that celebrates many of the past victories (against Napolean in 1812; against Nazi Germany in 1945), and a belated recognition of the mass persecution and deaths through Stalin’s Gulags and their commemoration through the new ‘Wall of Grief’, and statues that bemoan the holocaust. A triumvirate of symbols mark the public space of Moscow; of the continued power of the Kremlin as representing state hegemony; the growth of capitalism visible in the shiny new business districts and its buildings, and in the extant restoration and revival of the churches and monasteries of the Russian orthodox church.

Amid all this flux and uncertainty, where the past and future seem to collide to make for a challenging present, there is what travel writer Laurens Van der Post noted as the ‘abiding Russia’ which is to be found amongst its people; in their abilities to negotiate the strong-armed state, to be sensitive social citizens, sharp intellectuals, and caring community and family members are Russia’s ordinary citizens.

Representing these people are the ‘new farmers’ who seem to draw on the rich heritage of knowledge and skills that the cultural institution of the Dacha (summer cottages) has made possible. With their practices of cultivating small plots for family needs, preserving summer vegetables and fruits for the long winters, and a deep sense of conviviality in which produce, food and drink are shared with family and friends, the Dacha has become a source for a revival of post-collectivisation farms.

About 200 km away from Moscow and set in Kaluga district, which forms part of the Kaluzhskaya or ‘black soil belt’, this August we visited two unusual farms that hold the promise of post-industrial and post-collectivisation land use. Dr Elena, a gastroenterologist, who has drawn on her own childhood learning about herbs and healing, now manages a 10-hectare herbal garden. Growing a range of aromatic and healing herbs such as St John’s wort, wild oregano, calendula, sunflower, varieties of mint, rosemary, marigold and manarda, that makes the farm look like a fairy tale setting, she and her son, Artyom, not only dry, process and package these therapeutic herbal oils but also provide training in the cultivation, processing and use of these herbs to young people. Hosting us to a sumptuous lunch of a wide variety of Russian vegetarian food, Elena elaborates on the ‘pain’ that industrial-chemical agriculture has caused to the land and to the food systems. Stressing the need for food to also be healing and the positive contributions of organic agriculture, she highlights the possibility of a new programme that the Russian government seeks to promote in which such herbal gardens will be part of new clusters of production where organic agriculture and local arts and crafts will form part of the new rural economies. Such programmes are part of new policies enunciated by the current government in which, ‘self-reliance’ or ‘import substitution’ are being promoted.

In this, agriculture is placed as a primary economic activity, which will enable not only national self-sufficiency but also new global economic leverage. Just a few kilometres away from this herbal garden is a 250-hectare organic dairy farm that is managed by Tatyana, a meteorologist turned entrepreneur. Residing in Moscow but visiting the farm on a weekly basis, Tatyana works the land to grow organic wheat and oats and to herd and graze 90 cattle and three horses with a full-time staff of only four persons. Meat, milk, cream and cheese are sold in Moscow and in this she is ably assisted by her niece, Darya, a young graduate who grew up in a farm in the Altai region.

While both farms represent the possibilities of new, small-scale and specialised agriculture in Russia, they face several challenges. Since much of the cultivated land (66%) is under large Russian agri-business conglomerates, small farmers (representing 30% of land under citizens) struggle to make inroads into the market and to have adequate labour, infrastructure
and profits.

Nearly 10 years into the dairy farm, Tatyana’s investment has not paid huge profits and she only just about cuts it fine. Her commitment to sustaining the farm workers (a milkmaid, a mechanic cum manager, and a shepherd), who are paid regular salaries, means that she cannot easily disengage from the farm or sell it. Both Elena and Tatyana explicate that infrastructure in the rural areas and to farms is inadequate, costs of machinery prohibitive, information about schemes and support policies is not easily forthcoming, and the biggest problem they face is shortage of labour.

In a country where only about 37% of the scarce population lives in the vast rural areas, youth and especially trained personnel are hard to come by. The difficulties faced by these ‘small farmers’ are linked to the fact that Russia’s ‘new proprietarianism’ has led to either State, para-state or private corporates to manage mega production units. Its production of wheat, barley, oats, buckwheat, and dairy and meat industries now generate a plenitude of produce that are high in quality and reasonable in rates. But, largely run on industrial and chemical bases, these farms pose questions of ecological viability and long-term sustainability.

In such a context, it is the small, diversity-based and organic units that are worked by people like Elena and Tatyana that stand as models for alternative and ecologically sound possibilities. As both the ‘new farmers’ represent, their endeavours tie-in with the possibility of realising the real potential of the nation’s agro-ecological and culinary heritages.

In the endeavours of these ‘new farmers’, who seek to make possible the great land heritage of the vast Russian plains, what one must sense are the spirits of two great Russians, Chayanov and Vavilov. Alexander Chayanov (1888-1937) had sought through his deep scholarship to recognise that small holdings are capable of agricultural productivity. But he was hounded, marginalised, and silenced for his ideas that contradicted the ideology of forced collectivisation or large holdings as inevitable for high productivity.

Similarly, the great Nikolai Vavilov (1887-1943), had travelled the world to identify the sources of key grains and seeds and his work has laid the foundations for the establishment of the valuable ‘world centres for biodiversity’. While the international science world recognised him for his pioneering work, in Soviet Russia he was
made a scapegoat for the failures of collectivised agriculture and starved to death in Stalin’s Gulags.

In all of these lessons of history, where the issues of agricultural productivity and the role of peasants have been forced into either political and market ideologies of high productivity, it has been the land and its people who have become victims. At a time, when India’s own trajectory seems to veer towards the marginalisation of the small farmer and when the models of corporate, chemical-industrial agriculture are being promoted, it is only apposite that we remember both, the tragedies that the Soviet regime imposed on farmers and those who upheld the importance of small-scale farming, and the possibility that ‘new’ and ‘small farmers’ of present-day Russia hold for our collective futures across the world.

(The writer is a Social Anthropologist based in Karnataka)