Can land sales save Russias ailing farms?
Most farms across Russia are so unproductive that investors have long shied away from planting cash in them, leaving agriculture with prospects as black as the country’s fabled soil. The neglect has beaten down many farming villages: Cows are not milked, chickens go hungry and fields do not get plowed, though the villagers do alcoholism is rampant. Desperate residents are resigned to buying imported butter, flour and meat. The dire situation could brighten if a bill to permit the private sale of agricultural land in Russia for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 passes the State Duma, which gave early approval on May 16 and is to debate the bill further this summer and fall. President Vladimir Putin has pushed parliament to approve reforms allowing private ownership of urban, commercial and rural land; legislation on the first two was adopted and signed into law by the president last year. Since the early 1990s, private investment in agriculture has come through deals
