Posted on Friday, January 01, 2010 by admin in Care |

The life of an organic farmer may be hard at times, but it certainly is not dull. Since 1991, my husband and I have traveled in Russia on four occasions, meeting farmers and gardeners. In the process, we’ve had great adventures, met lots of really wonderful people and made dear friends. We volunteer our time for The Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI), an exceptionally effective non-governmental organization in San Francisco.

CCI has sent hundreds of tons of donated seeds to some 3 million farmers and gardeners, and recruits volunteers to advise and assist them to raise food. Gardening in Russia is not just a hobby, it’s a necessity. Food production has fallen 40 % since the old Soviet days, and with the new free market system it is also very costly. Fortunately, about 50% of Russians have access to garden plots, called dachas. Every inch of soil is cultivated, and the harvest is preserved for the long, cold winter. Dachas produce 30% of all food grown in this vast country.

We have traveled from St. Petersburg and Moscow in the north, to the Caspian Sea in the south, giving lectures and workshops. Wherever we went, we found a surprising interest in organic and sustainable agriculture. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union chemical fertilizers and pesticides are very scarce and expensive. Many of the huge state farms have gone bankrupt and parcels of their land are being distributed to private farmers, who are former employees of the state farms and discharged servicemen with little agriculture experience. Farmers and gardeners are left with no fertilizers, pesticides or knowledge of how to grow without them. Knowledge of alternative approaches to agriculture does not exist, because in the former Soviet Union anyone who tried anything but the official approach could be imprisoned! Most farmers we met had not used chemicals for three years, and their crop yields are progressively lower each year.

While we were in Moscow in 1993, we made a major breakthrough. In Russia, no one works on the weekend, so it seems, for everyone is out at the dacha. So, we went sightseeing in nearby Sergiev Posad, one of the few remaining ancient cities. Here is the residence of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church, a monastery, beautiful churches and museums. It also is the seat of the regional government, and we were invited to meet with the administrator in charge of agriculture, a request we couldn’t refuse. He described the problems of declining production and the lack of supplies and equipment. We told him of our experience in teaching sustainable methods, which doesn’t rely on chemical pesticides and fertilizer. He requested our assistance for the newly privatized farmers and pledged his support. CCI subsequently agreed to take this on as a major project.

The administrator told us about the disaster of the 1993 potato crop. It had been a good harvest, and the private farmers expected to sell their entire crop to the Federation government in Moscow, as was customary. However, with the economic reforms, the official said, the government had already purchased its potatoes from Poland. With no other market, and no transportation, hundreds of thousands of tons of potatoes rotted in the fields.

The Sergiev Posad project has blossomed into a comprehensive program. In the winter of 1993-94, CCI sent 5 University Ag instructors to lecture on sustainable agriculture to the faculty at the All Russian Ag College in Sergiev Posad. Their lecture notes and materials were translated by the College and distributed to 300 ag schools throughout the country. They also assisted in developing a four-year curriculum in sustainable agriculture which is now in place in all ag colleges.

With CCI’s help, the local farmers created the Farming Development Service (FDS). They wanted this because the farmers needed help with their problems and with information on low-cost, sustainable agriculture techniques. There was no support from government or the agriculture college for this, so a membership organization by and for the farmers began. Thus began the first ag extension service in Russia.

In September, 1994 we were asked to return and help the regional farmers develop markets for their chemically free crops. Since they were in limbo between the old centralized system and the free market system, they had no experience in marketing their produce. We found out when we got there that the farmers hoped to sell their crops through a county fair, which had been suggested to them by one of the American instructors. They wanted us to help them to organize the fair, which was scheduled less than one month away, in October!

Neither my husband nor I had ever put together a country fair before (especially in one month), but they were desperate for help. First we publicized the fair through the Russian and foreign press in Moscow, sent invitations by fax to food distributors, processors, wholesalers, and foreign embassies in Moscow that there would be pesticide-free food to buy in Sergiev Posad. We helped FDS to develop displays and written materials to be handed out to fairgoers.

We returned home just before the event. After it was over we received a fax telling us that the farmers who exhibited at the fair sold all their 1994 harvest and received contracts for their 1995 crops. Everyone declared the exhibition a huge success and now plan to make it an annual affair. Word of this event has led to requests to form FDS organizations in many other communities.

In 1995 CCI brought six members of the Sergiev Posad agricultural community plus an official of the Russian Ministry of Agriculture to participate in a month long training program in sustainable agriculture and extension service here in the US. Universities and extension services from four states hosted the CCI delegation to study farming techniques, sustainable agriculture, and extension service.

We hosted the delegation at our farm for eight days, and arranged meetings for them with officials in Washington who are involved with agriculture. It was important for the Americans to hear the Russians taking hold of our agriculture ideas and fitting them to the Russian experience.

In May 1995 we returned to Moscow, where we discovered another opportunity to help. We met with the director of an ag research institute which is receiving financial support from the World Bank and the Russian government to develop the Farmer Information and Advisory Service (FIAS) which will be located in all of the agriculturally important regions in Russia. FIAS has Russian agriculture specialists, offices, computer banks and telephones ready to help the farmers, but they lack outreach know-how since there is no tradition of extension services, thus posing a serious problem. We told the Director of CCI’s work in Sergiev Posad and offered to assist FIAS with the wealth of information available in US universities and libraries. In June the Director officially requested assistance from CCI in:

* arranging visits of US extension specialists to train employees of FIAS to work in each of 37 agriculture regions as extension agents
* organizing visits of US specialists in sustainable agriculture to consult on adapting sustainable agriculture to Russian conditions
* assisting with the training of FIAS employees, both through seminars in Russia and internships in America.

CCI has started this assistance in November by supporting an International Conference on Sustainable Agriculture in Sergiev Posad at the All-Russian Agriculture College. Organizations from Europe, US, and representatives from 300 Russian ag colleges and 37 FIAS agriculture regions attended. Also the first Sustainable Agriculture Specialist has been sent to advise and train the Federal Center in Moscow as well as participate in the conference at Sergiev Posad.

My husband and I are now Agriculture Advisors to CCI for the Sustainable Agriculture Initiatives in Russia. We believe that support for private farmers and agriculture businesses in Russia will save the private farming movement there. We hope this will create hundreds of change agents which will support private enterprise and democracy in Russia. We feel very fortunate to be part of this. Pretty exciting stuff for a couple of organic farmers from the Blue Ridge mountains of Maryland.