Why did it become impossible for the peasants to survive even with land?
The townspeople have a common misconception that it is easier to survive in times of crisis in the countryside. They say, you have your own garden, your own farm, you won't be lost from hunger. People in villages really usually have plenty of land. Only then the question is, what prevents them from growing potatoes with tomatoes or, in the end, getting a cow, a couple of pigs, or at least chickens with turkeys?
Apparently, the townspeople in this regard consider themselves smarter than the villagers, because the latter have practically failed in recent years. Yes, the village is bent every day and it's not that there are no cattle, in many places soon there will be no people left. It's not about urbanization, but about the difficulties of life in the countryside. Engaging in agriculture, in fact, is already completely unprofitable, especially if we talk about small volumes. That is, it became unprofitable even to feed oneself. Don't believe me?
We talked with the villagers and learned how life is today in the village.
My first interlocutor was a former farmer, and now the owner of his personal peasant farm, Ruslan V. I was engaged in this business not because of a special desire, but because he and his family went bankrupt in the fields of farming - at some point it became so unprofitable that there was no way to be saved. The main problem was that the harvested grain did not cover the cost of servicing loans and taxes. In the summer in the south of Russia, during the record harvests, which senior officials of the Russian Federation so often brag about, the purchase price of grain is so low that small farmers "have nothing to catch." At the same time, during these record-breaking years, the reception of grain was often stopped at many elevators due to an oversupply of production.
All this has dealt such a blow to small-scale farming that it is unlikely to recover soon. And now Ruslan, despite the fact that he has the opportunity to calmly move to the Moscow region and do a common business there with his father-in-law, who came from there, continues to work in the village and hope for a better life. Now he has about a hundred head of cattle (cattle). All this stuff is accounted for as a personal subsidiary farm, which is pretty good - there are practically no taxes. But this is probably the only real plus. As for the rest, now doing this business, even on such a scale, is practically completely unprofitable, and sometimes even very unprofitable.
What's the matter? Well, firstly, a person engaged in animal husbandry cannot do anything else - he devotes himself entirely to this business, of course, if he does not have one or two cows, and even then - even with two you have to tinker a lot. Feed, drink several times a day - depending on the season. And if there are calves, which, of course, are born quite often in a more or less large herd, then you have to practically live in the workplace. Naturally, getting a job under such conditions will not work, otherwise the whole animal will simply die of hunger. Someone will ask: why should a person, engaged in his own livestock raising, need to work somewhere else, he seems to be like his own master and has his own business. But here you need to understand that as soon as you started doing this, you must prepare for a one and a half year old,or even a two-year period of lack of money - until your animals grow up, nothing will work out of them. Just spend money. This is where work would not hurt. At worst, you can try with loans, but in rural areas without work and with dubious plans to grow cattle, the bank is unlikely to give you an acceptable amount. Only a penny.
And the expense is rather big. According to Ruslan, he has practically nothing from every head of his cows and bulls. Our interlocutor, like a former farmer, has some equipment, access to the fields - old acquaintances give the opportunity to mow grass for hay himself, and also share straw. This cuts costs slightly. Nevertheless, for straw and hay, which for a year and a half need at least a couple of tons for each head, it still takes about eight to ten thousand rubles. Again, this is only for one animal. Naturally, you can't get off with only straw and hay, you need more grain and other feed. It takes at least 1.5-2 tons to grow a head, that is, 15-20 thousand rubles. Another item of expenses is the frequent treatment of animals from all kinds of parasites or other types of diseases - from foot and mouth disease, smallpox, for example. On average, it takes another 2-3 thousand. We must also not forget about water and electricity. Water is especially actively consumed in summer, and light in winter, when it gets dark early, but you still need to manage it. In general, another plus five or six thousand. Now about income. Taking into account all the expenses from the head, it is possible to get in the region of ten thousand rubles, and sometimes even less. And the case? What about unforeseen expenses? All this is hard.
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Ruslan had previously tried to be engaged in sheep breeding, but quickly realized that it was even more disadvantageous. According to him, the meaning in rams is only when you have a herd of a thousand or even more heads. The fact is that the fat from the head is in the region of 500 rubles. In general, he gave up on this business.
But with pigs it is still sadder - now everyone is abandoning this ignoble occupation. The fact is that almost all agricultural producers in the country were hit hard by Miratorg. He crushed everything under himself so much that nobody takes anything from people like Ruslan. Their meat comes out too expensive. And the unprecedented state support provided to Miratorg has made the company a monopolist. Moreover, this picture is observed everywhere. As if for the sake of just one company they decided to destroy the entire Russian village.
And it would be fine only Ruslan. If he concentrated on cattle, he could at the very least earn his living, but one of his recent visits to the veterinary station turned out to be an extremely unpleasant surprise for him. During the execution of some regular papers in between cases, he was told that in 2020, most likely, he would have to pay tax for each cattle. This seems to be a logical continuation of the "Mercury" program, which has been introduced for several years.
The essence of this program is as follows - each animal must be taken into account. It must be known who owns it and where it is. Also, every movement of any animal around the country is recorded. Among other things, in the case of sale and purchase, the transaction amount must be noted and saved. All vaccinations and treatments are also here. Now this program is being advertised as a modern means of replacing all the paperwork and other bureaucratic requirements. However, there are moments that are already alarming the owners of private household plots and all others related to the production of meat and other livestock products. For example, if a person for some reason forgot to transfer data about his animal, then this threatens him with severe fines in the tens of thousands of rubles.
Moreover, even the owners of one chicken theoretically fall under this rule. But, according to Ruslan, so far no one has thoroughly taken up the bird, and people are not very stressed. So far, the notorious "Mercury" has not complicated the life of our interlocutor, but this is only for now. If taxes are introduced on literally every head of animal, then agriculture, in his opinion, will simply be destroyed, and the villagers will all scatter in all directions.
Even now, the villages are even worse than they were in the early nineties. But then almost everyone in the villages had cows, chickens or goats. Now no one owns almost anything, fearing costs and harsh punishments in case of the slightest violation. As for the tax, there is still no clarity - all the representatives of the Rosselkhoznadzor, with whom I had a chance to talk, unanimously denied the possibility of introducing such a tax. But in fact, these promises can no longer be believed. Once upon a time we were already promised that the retirement age would not be raised. Raised. For example, Ruslan was told in secret that the tax could be up to 18% of the profits he received from his head. And it doesn't matter if it's a resale or you raised it yourself and then turned it over for meat.
Another point that seriously complicates the life of agricultural producers such as Ruslan is local officials and their excessive greed. Ruslan himself somehow got fired up with the idea of getting a state grant for his activities. I called the regional Ministry of Agriculture. There they listened to his short story and immediately answered that without the petition of the head of his district, no one would fuss. Ruslan is practically not familiar with this person - he saw it twice, and even then these meetings were not the most pleasant. It is unlikely that he will somehow help. In general, the case died out. Perhaps even for the best. Ruslan was prompted how this could be solved without referring to the chapter itself. One friend managed it. Only now he had to "roll back" half of the allocated amount. When he was just bothering about this issue, the Ministry of Agriculture made it clear to him that the opportunity,to get something is real only if there is a desire to share. And if you don't want to share, then the papers will not go anywhere beyond the desk of some secretary. The man agreed. As a result, half of the amount immediately went away. And everything would be fine, if only it was not necessary to account for every penny that you received under the grant. And here you can get out as you want. We have to cheat in order to somehow reflect the justified spending of the money that went into the rollback.
For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that over the past year or two, the situation has become somewhat better. According to Ruslan, minor purges regularly take place in regional structures - officials are caught and now many are afraid to snatch a big jackpot at the expense of such hard workers. So we can talk about a small victory over corruption.
Ruslan himself had another unpleasant incident. It was with the very head of the regional administration who had to be involved in order to receive a state grant. Ruslan wanted to lease land from the state. This is done again through the chapter. The chapter listened, listened, and at the end of the story said: “Who are you? There is no way to call you and there is nothing to take from you. " Ruslan was not taken aback and asked in response: "Is this the official reason for the refusal?" As a result, the conversation quickly ended. But by a happy coincidence, the administration with Ruslan subsequently contacted and gave the go-ahead to register the land. True, it has not yet been formalized, but there is already a problem in the bureaucracy. The head told Ruslan that he himself would love to distribute land, but he is constantly being stressed from above, so he is unable to do anything really on his own. They strain himso that he would give land to people with money, that is, to those from whom one can take something, if we proceed from the logic of his first statement addressed to Ruslan. This incident was one of the main reasons why Ruslan asked not to mention his name and place of residence. He was afraid that when his data were published, he would definitely not see the land. And he desperately needs her.
Other peasants with whom I managed to communicate have similar problems. Even those with only one cow or bull say that there is no benefit. Because, firstly, there is a lot of trouble - feeding, watering, caring for, removing manure, harvesting feed, and so on. The only plus in this is the ability to save money. By investing in a bull, you seem to be saving up small amounts, which will eventually turn into a more or less acceptable amount. You invest ten, five, three, etc., and then return fifty to sixty thousand rubles at once. Convenient in cases where money is urgently needed for treatment, for example, or the organization of an event. For the rest, there are only drawbacks. As the price of everything rises, so does the cost of animals. Inflation and devaluation of the people in the village affected directly.
From all this, we can conclude that it is not profitable to engage in cattle breeding in the Russian province. There is practically no support from the state, and it costs just titanic efforts and money to achieve it. And if all this begins to be subject to huge taxes, then everything will be over. In the opinion of one of our interlocutors, all this is done with the aim of promoting the interests of large companies, including foreign ones. Perhaps this is so. But in the long term, this is unlikely to somehow help our authorities to create a self-sufficient state. In general, destroyed agriculture is a threat to national security, which the Russian authorities love to talk about.
Vasily Melnichenko, a well-known Russian farmer and head of the Federal Village Council movement, believes that the Mercury program is nothing more than "tinsel", which is of little use, since the real problems of modern Russian agriculture are not being addressed by the authorities.
Will Mercury really be paid?
- We've already gone through something similar - for example, when the slaughterhouse was made certified. People just started to slowly get rid of the cattle. I, of course, cannot vouch for this - I will definitely not say anything, the government will do it. But personally, I think that yes, Mercury will be paid. Anyway, did they ever do something for free? In general, they began to introduce Mercury to us due to the fact that Russia is a member of the WTO, and according to the norms of organization, all movements and other things should be recorded. This, of course, is good, it should be so, but the way we do it - such programs should be in last place. Because we just have a dire situation in agriculture. But I would reassure all citizens of the Russian Federation about the unrest on the topic of "Mercury" and livestock in general. It's actually good - the TV shows too,how good we are. Miratorg is developing well, other complexes are developing. This is how the state is going to work. But this will not give anything in terms of food security, will not give any development of agriculture. Well, we, the peasants, just need to stop working and that's it. In fact, there are simple ways to resolve the existing problems, but the state has some other tasks. Let me give you an example of an effective organization. Take Ireland. It is slightly smaller in area than the Leningrad Region. In terms of population - much less. The climate in these regions is not much different from ours - only one degree annual difference. But there are 150,000 farmers in Ireland. On average, each of them has a land plot of 130 hectares. And now they produce 12 times more products than in the entire Leningrad region. At the same time, products worth billions of euros are exported, that is, they fully provide the country, and the rest is sent abroad. Everything seems to be fine with our papers - everything is spelled out, but in reality everything is bad. Because the financial minuscule that is actually allocated for the development of agriculture is completely insignificant. Here are the same grants, for example. In most cases, they turn out to be a tragedy for most of the peasants.
Why?
- Will explain. If I want to make money in the countryside, if I want to have an efficient farm, I need to invest at least 15 million rubles. And the maximum grant I can get is only three million. I write a business plan, I run in a panic to all instances, and so on. Well, money seems to be free, but in reality it's not like that. For five years, for example, a person has no right to work anywhere. Should be the head of this farm and that's it. He will use these three million to build some poor barn and buy a maximum of ten cows. He will no longer have any profit. He is a slave to this non-profit brute. In three years he will curse the Ministry of Agriculture, these cows and this grant. We have many examples in various fields where people simply do not stand up and fall under a criminal article, because they are forced to return these three million - they did not fulfill the plan,for which this money was given and so on. That is, like "Mercury", it is also from the "launch a fool" series. They just pretend that they supposedly work, that they are giving us something. But in fact, there are only meetings in this Ministry of Agriculture. In fact, none of them understands the essence of life in the village and how all this is done in general. I'm just desperate to say: well, let's not invent anything. It's just awful, we have been trying for so many years to come up with something, but nothing comes of it, and there are many good examples. The same Poland. The Poles also experienced a restructuring from collective and state farms to cooperatives and small farms. But they are doing well - people work quietly and earn money, hire workers and pay them decently. People come to them from everywhere - even from Russia, even from Belarus, even from Ukraine. We have nothing of the kind. And all these mercury against this background are kind of ridiculous. Just let it work, don't help us and don't invent anything!
Lyubov Shvedova