Who owns or controls the agricultural land in present-day Russia?
Jan Miszewski, Clear Lake, Iowa, USA Good question Jan. The collapse of agriculture in Russia is a really big issue. My understanding is that all agricultural land still belongs to the state, but you can buy long-term leases. Quite a lot of land has been privatised, but a huge amount still remains in the hands of the old state farms. Many of the villages I visited on this trip had a really tragic appearance. Most of the farm buildings were completely derelict. Villagers told me there were simply no jobs on the farms anymore. Why aren’t villagers leasing land and starting up their own small farms? I think the answer is that most of them simply don’t know how. They don’t have the ability to borrow money. They don’t have the experience of running a private farm. On a previous trip to the Urals I met a Russian businessman who had bought the lease on 1,000 hectares of agricultural land. He told me he had found it impossible to get any Russians to come and farm the land for him. He thought 7
