Section I. Problems of rational use of non-black soil lands
The Central Black Earth economic region includes five regions located in the south of the central part of the country - Kursk, Belgorod, Lipetsk, Voronezh and Tambov. The largest city in this region, occupying more than 167 thousand square kilometers of area, is Voronezh, and the population has almost reached 8 million people.
Economic and geographical position
The Central Black Earth economic region of Russia has an advantageous position, since it borders on the most developed region - Central, and not far from it are the Volga region and the North Caucasus, solid fuel and energy bases.
Rich tracts of fertile black soil and iron ore reserves have a positive effect on the formation of its economic component, as well as natural conditions, which are characterized by moderate continentality. Despite some aridity, this ensures high yields, and conditions are generally well suited for agricultural activities. The main geographical points are the Oka-Don Lowland and the Central Russian Upland.
Voronezh is home to 1/8 of the region’s total population – a million people.
Rice. 1. Voronezh.
Resources and natural conditions of the Central Black Earth economic region
This part of Russia is rich in iron ores, the main part of which is concentrated in the region of the Kursk magnetic anomaly - according to experts, this deposit can produce 43.4 million tons of raw materials. This makes it one of the largest iron ore provinces on Earth. To date, 17 deposits have been developed, and another 14 are actively used. The total area of the anomaly is 160 thousand sq. km., it is distributed over two regions - Kursk and partly Belgorod. 62% of the total reserve is high-grade iron ore, while 38% is low-grade iron ore.
Rice. 2. Quarry in the area of the Kursk magnetic anomaly.
Another point in the raw material characteristics of the Central Black Earth economic region is the copper-nickel province in the Voronezh region.
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The region also has non-metallic raw materials that are widely used in industry - these are Lipetsk dolomites, Voronezh refractory clays, Kursk phosphorites, etc.
The fuel used in the region is almost entirely imported due to the poverty of its fuel and energy resources. It is also poor on water, which negatively affects its economic development. Forests are almost never used in industrial production, performing mainly two roles - recreational and soil-protective. At the same time, soil resources are of great value, because 80% of them are black soil.
Labor resources and population
This economic region is home to 5.3% of the total population of Russia, that is, 7.9 million people. Here there is not such a significant gap between the urban and rural populations as in other regions: 616 and 38.4%, respectively. For a long time, the Central Black Earth region was labor-abundant and supplied labor resources to other regions, but the violation of the age-sex structure of the population led to negative trends - it is gradually becoming labor-scarce.
In general, the area belongs to a category of uniform population, rare for Russia.
Economic complex of the Central Black Earth region
Two subdistricts were formed here - Western (Kursk and Belgorod regions) and Eastern (Voronezh, Lipetsk and Tambov), which have different branches of specialization in industry. Thus, in the Western subdistrict the main attention is paid to ferrous metallurgy, metalworking, mechanical engineering, chemical industry, and also to oil refining, mining and light industry. The production centers are not only Belgorod and Kursk, but also Zheleznogorsk, Oskol and other large cities. 
Rice. 3. Belgorod.
Mechanical engineering and the chemical industry are also developed in the Eastern subdistrict, and it also specializes in the construction industry, horse breeding and the food industry. The largest centers are Lipetsk, Borisoglebsk, Tambov, Lebedyan and others.
In the structure of industrial production of the Central Chernozem region, 30% comes from the Voronezh region.
The local engineering industry, on the one hand, produces equipment for local mining industries, and on the other hand, specializes in the production of precision instruments (these are televisions, computers, refrigerators and other similar equipment).
Agriculture is very developed in the region - 60% of fertile land is plowed here, where wheat, fruits and vegetables are grown. Meat and dairy cattle breeding, pig and poultry farming are at a high level.
Thanks to the uniform population, the transport network is well developed. As for the energy complex, it operates almost entirely on imported raw materials, and due to the poverty of water resources, it does not include hydroelectric power plants.
What have we learned?
The Central Black Earth economic region includes five regions and is home to one of the largest ore deposits in the world - the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly. The region is also distinguished by its soil richness, in short: more than 80% of the land here is fertile black soil. The main industrial sectors are ferrous metallurgy, mechanical engineering, and the chemical industry. The population is distributed relatively evenly throughout the region, there is no obvious bias towards urbanization, but a shortage of labor resources is gradually beginning to be felt.
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The Non-Chernozem Region, or more precisely, the Non-Chernozem Zone of the RSFSR, is a huge territory stretching from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to the forest-steppe zone in the south with its chernozem soils and from the Baltic Sea to Western Siberia. There are 29 regions and autonomous republics included in four large economic regions - Northwestern, Central, Volgo-Vyatka and partly Ural. The total area of the Non-Chernozem Zone is 2824 thousand km 2. This is larger than the area of France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Germany combined. About 60 million people live in the Non-Black Earth Region, i.e. almost 74 of the population of the USSR.
Since ancient times, the Non-Black Earth Zone of Russia has played and continues to play a major role in the history of our Motherland, in its economic and cultural development. Here, between the Oka and Volga rivers, at the end of the 15th century. The Russian centralized state arose. The Russian national culture was created in the Non-Black Earth Region, from here the Russians settled throughout the vast country. On this territory, for centuries, the Russian people defended their freedom and independence. Here Russian industry was born, the Russian proletariat grew and became stronger.
And in our time, the Non-Black Earth Region has retained a primary role in the political, economic and cultural life of the country. The Center of the Non-Black Earth Region, Leningrad, the Urals are the most important industrial bases, forges of scientific and labor personnel. In the Non-Black Earth Region there is the capital of our Motherland - Moscow, the second city in economic and cultural importance - Leningrad and such largest cities and industrial centers as Gorky, Sverdlovsk, Perm, Yaroslavl, Izhevsk, Tula, etc.
The Non-Black Earth Region is an important agricultural region of the RSFSR. Here is 1/5 of the republic's agricultural land area.
The development of agriculture here is favored by the presence of huge tracts of arable land, many meadows and pastures, as well as good moisture and the almost complete absence of droughts. True, the soils here are poor in humus. However, the soils of the Non-Black Earth Region in climate-favorable areas, when carrying out the necessary reclamation (draining, liming, applying mineral fertilizers), can produce up to 80 centners of grain and up to 800-1000 centners of potatoes per hectare.
The decision of the party and government “On measures for the further development of agriculture in the Non-Black Earth Zone of the RSFSR”, adopted in 1974, outlined the accelerated development of agriculture in the Non-Black Earth Zone based on its intensification, land reclamation, comprehensive mechanization and chemicalization and placed it at the level of a national task.
The development of the Non-Black Earth Region will take more than one five-year period. By 1990, it is planned to increase the production of various agricultural products here, compared to 1975, by 2-2.5 times.
But the accelerated growth in the production of grain, meat, milk, potatoes, vegetables, and other products is only one aspect of the rise in agriculture in the Non-Black Earth Region. After all, all the resulting products need to be preserved and processed. Therefore, new grain elevators, meat processing plants, dairies, and storage facilities for potatoes and vegetables are being built here.
It is especially important to organize large mechanized farms in dairy and meat farming - the main branch of agriculture in the Non-Black Earth Region. The population of this zone is the largest consumer of milk and fresh meat.
Work is underway to change the structure and geography of cultivated crops. Thus, the areas under oats and barley are expanding due to wheat, as they are more productive and, in addition, suitable for feeding livestock, work is underway to more rationally place industrial crops (primarily flax), to concentrate plantings of potatoes and vegetables.
The primary task is to develop new non-chernozem lands for arable land, improve existing arable land, and increase its fertility. Another important task is the creation of cultivated pastures.
In the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, the Non-Black Earth Region was given an important task - to implement a comprehensive program to transform the Non-Black Earth Zone of the RSFSR into an area of highly productive agriculture and livestock breeding, as well as to develop related industries.
It is unthinkable to fulfill the tasks of transforming agriculture in the Non-Black Earth Region without the active participation of young people. The Central Committee of the Komsomol declared the reclamation and rural construction of the Non-Black Earth Region an All-Union Komsomol shock construction project. As L.I. Brezhnev noted, “The Central Committee of the Party expects that the Lenin Komsomol and Soviet youth will make their worthy contribution to the development of agriculture in the Non-Black Earth Zone of the RSFSR. We are convinced that this major program will be attractive to boys and girls; here there is an opportunity for everyone to apply their knowledge, energy, and show their love for working on the earth.”
Considering the great importance of the development of the Non-Black Earth Zone, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in September 1977 established a special medal “For the transformation of the Non-Black Earth Zone of the RSFSR”. Since 1980, wages for agricultural workers in the Non-Black Earth Zone have been increased.
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A large agricultural and industrial region in the European part of Russia. Includes 23 regions and 6 republics that are part of the Russian Federation (all regions and republics of the Northern, Northwestern, Central, Volga-Vyatka economic... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
I; Wed 1. Land with a low content of organic matter; podzolic soils. 2. Zone of distribution of non-chernozem, podzolic soils (in Russia). Revive n. * * * non-chernozem region is a large agricultural and industrial region in... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Wed. A large agricultural region in the European part of Russia. Ephraim's explanatory dictionary. T. F. Efremova. 2000...
Wed. 1. Land with a low content of organic matter; podzolic soils. 2. Zone of distribution of such soils in the European part of Russia. Ephraim's explanatory dictionary. T. F. Efremova. 2000... Modern explanatory dictionary of the Russian language by Efremova
non-chernozem region- non-chernoz emye, I (non-chernozem lands) and Nechernoz emye, I (geographical) ... Russian spelling dictionary
Non-Black Earth Region- (geographical) ...
non-chernozem region- (2 s), Ex. about non-blackness/me... Spelling dictionary of the Russian language
non-chernozem region- I; Wed 1) Land with a low content of organic matter; podzolic soils. 2) Zone of distribution of non-chernozem, podzolic soils (in Russia) Revive non-chernozem/me... Dictionary of many expressions
non-chernozem region- not/black/o/earth/e [y/e] ... Morphemic-spelling dictionary
Books
- The Tale of a Blue Flower and Its Miraculous Transformations, Viktor Stepanchenko. The journalistic book-album is dedicated to flax, which has a rich history. Flax is the national culture of the Russian people. The famous Dutch painting originates in the current Russian...
- Disappearing village of Russia. Non-Black Earth Region in the 1960-1980s, L.N. Denisova. In 1907, zemstvo doctor A.I. Shingarev published the sensational book “The Dying Village.” The book is the result of a sanitary and economic study of two villages in Voronezh district: Novo-Zhivotinny...
The zone is characterized by a temperate continental climate, sufficient, and in some areas excessive, rainfall. The continental climate increases from west to east. The amount of precipitation and the sum of active temperatures change in the opposite direction. With a generally large amount of precipitation, its distribution during the growing season is uneven; At the beginning of summer, droughts are common, and in the second half there is often excessive rainfall.
The soils of the Non-Chernozem Zone are represented by several types with a large number of subtypes, classes and varieties. The most common are soddy-podzolic soils with low potential fertility and unfavorable agronomic properties. These soils are poor in organic matter and nutrients, biologically inactive, acidic, and have unfavorable physical properties.
The climatic conditions of the zone make it possible, with active regulation of soil conditions in intensive farming, to obtain high and stable yields of grain and forage crops, fiber flax, vegetables and root crops. Developed feed production allows for highly intensive dairy and meat farming, as well as industrial poultry farming.
The leading grain crops in the Non-Black Earth zone are winter rye and wheat, spring barley and oats; less peas and spring wheat are cultivated. The main industrial crop is fiber flax. The main potato areas are concentrated here, and vegetable growing is developed.
The soils of the zone, along with increasing fertility, require cultural and technical improvement. The arable land is represented by small and shallow fields (shallow contours), the arable layer is rocky, the fields are often covered with microdepressions and saucers, and there are a lot of shrubs.
In large farms of the Non-Black Earth Zone, crop rotations of various types and types are introduced. If necessary, special importance is attached to the agrotechnical organization of the territory and a set of soil protection measures, which also includes soil protection crop rotations.
Without touching on the specifics of individual crop rotations, we will present only the best predecessors for the main field crops of the zone. Winter crops are placed mainly in occupied fertilized fallows. Various feed mixtures, perennial grasses after the first cutting, early potatoes and vegetable crops are used as fallow crops. In the northern regions of the zone, and also if it is necessary to have a so-called repair field, winter crops are placed in clean fallows. In specialized crop rotations, winter crops are also placed after non-fallow predecessors: after barley, fiber flax, and oats.
It is most advisable to place potatoes and vegetable crops after winter crops along the layer of perennial grasses, along the turnover of the layer. Repeated cultivation of potatoes and alternation of different types of vegetable crops are acceptable.
The classic predecessor of fiber flax has long been a layer of perennial grasses. Now in specialized flax crop rotations it is placed after winter crops, as well as after row crops.
The most important agrotechnical role in crop rotations in the Non-Chernozem Zone is played by clover and clover-grass mixtures. They are sown under the cover of winter and spring grains. When the yield of winter crops is high, sowing perennial grasses under them does not always give positive results. In this case, for overseeding perennial grasses, feed mixtures from annual crops using the continuous sowing method are used.
The soil cultivation system in the Non-Chernozem Zone takes into account their unfavorable physical properties: high density, the possibility of excessive moisture. Therefore, the main treatment is carried out, as a rule, to the full depth of the arable layer, mainly with its wrapping. Taking into account the biological characteristics of the crops, during the main cultivation the arable layer of soil is deepened. Deep fall plowing is preceded by stubble peeling as an important agrotechnical technique for weed control.
Pre-sowing tillage is carried out using loosening working tools to a shallow depth. During pre-sowing treatment, combined implements are widely used.
Post-sowing tillage and crop care techniques are based on reducing the mechanical impact on the soil (minimal tillage) and the widespread use of herbicides.
The fertilization system is intensive. The humidity conditions and soil characteristics of the zone ensure high efficiency of mineral and organic fertilizers, as well as liming. A special place is occupied by organic fertilizers, which ensure enhanced reproduction of soil fertility in the zone in many respects. Advanced farms annually apply up to 20 t/ha or more of organic fertilizers. At the same time, not only high yields of all main crops are obtained, but also conditions for increasing efficiency of the entire agricultural complex are created. Along with organic fertilizers, mineral fertilizers provide high efficiency. An important condition for high payback of fertilizers is periodic liming of acidic podzolic soils.
The system of methods for protecting plants from weeds, pests and diseases includes such important agrotechnical measures as strict adherence to accepted crop rotations, timely and high-quality implementation of processing methods, and all field work. At the same time, with the use of progressive technologies for cultivating field crops, the use of chemical plant protection products - pesticides - is also increasing.
A prerequisite for further intensification of agriculture in the Non-Black Earth Zone is land reclamation. Its high efficiency is explained by the presence of a large amount of waterlogged soils here, as well as swampy areas and peatlands.
Modern regulatory and technological systems for farming in the zone are being developed by scientific and design and survey institutions. They define all specific technological methods for cultivating agricultural crops. Agrotechnical complexes are inextricably linked with differentiated models of soil fertility, parameters of their reproduction, and organizational and economic capabilities of the farm. An important distinctive feature of farming systems is that soil fertility parameters are given at two levels: modern optimal and promising. According to this gradation of fertility patterns, the level of soil productivity also changes.
At the same time, in the agricultural system, both today and in the near future, special importance is attached to soil protection in all its elements: combating erosion, preventing chemical pollution, mechanical compaction, etc.
The farming system is a technological law of production. After mastering it, any deviation from the quantitative and qualitative standards provided for by it is unacceptable. At the same time, it assumes a creative attitude of the agronomic service of the farm to specific technologies, taking into account the weather conditions of the growing season. In addition, from time to time new technological, organizational and economic elements are introduced into the farming system: new varieties, machines, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
During the period of development of the farming system, the development team exercises authorial control over the correct implementation of its main elements. At the same time, possible minor technological and organizational deficiencies are identified and promptly eliminated. In this and subsequent periods, the first results of the development of the new farming system are summarized, primarily the provision of planned yields of field crops and the corresponding economic indicators of their production, the correspondence of the actual parameters of soil fertility reproduction to the calculated ones, etc. All this is used to systematically strengthen the direction of the farming system and the regulatory and technological refinement of its individual elements.
The farm guarantees timely and high-quality provision of the new farming system with all the necessary resources, strict compliance with technological standards, and also provides favorable conditions for authorial control over the development of the farming system and its further improvement.
The effectiveness of using scientifically based zonal farming systems is concretely confirmed in the practice of advanced farms in the Non-Black Earth Zone.
Expert, leading researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Geographical Sciences Tatyana Nefedova talks about the most little-known territory of the country - rural areas.
— Your colleagues, urbanists and regional experts, who have already appeared on the pages of Novaya, talked mainly about the fate of large and small cities. But the gigantic territory between these cities remains terra incognita. What is happening to the Russian village today?
— Agriculture and rural settlement are largely tied to natural conditions. In accordance with them, our country can be divided into five unequal parts.
The first is a huge peripheral zone, which occupies more than 40% of Russia's area. This is a territory with the most difficult natural conditions - the northern part of Siberia, the Far East, and the European North. It is impossible to engage in crop production there; the rural population density does not exceed 1 person per square meter. km, and natural resources have historically been developed in pockets.
The taiga forest belt from Karelia, the Komi Republic and the Arkhangelsk region to the Amur region and Khabarovsk Territory can also be classified as the periphery of the country. Here people mainly lived and live in the forest, the development of the territory took place exclusively along river valleys, and the population density is also low. In Soviet times, agriculture was artificially “drawn” here with a specialization that was not typical of natural conditions. It was supported by huge subsidies and is now mostly closed. This is still more than 20% of the territory of Russia. That is, on two thirds of the country there is neither a rural population nor conditions for crop production.
The third zone is the classic, old-developed Non-Black Earth Region. This zone is also dominated by forest landscapes, but there was, although subsidized, fairly developed agriculture. Here they grew expensive grain with low yields and raised livestock with low productivity. When the subsidies ran out, agriculture began to shrink.
The fourth zone begins with the Kursk and Belgorod regions, partially affecting the Volga region, the south of the Urals and Siberia. Its core is the plains of the North Caucasus, especially the Krasnodar and Stavropol territories. It is this Black Earth strip that is the hope and support of our agriculture. Collective farms remain there, agricultural holdings are moving there, and there are many farmers there. The active population leaving the northern regions, in addition to cities and their suburbs, often chose these areas as their new place of residence.
Finally, the republics of the North Caucasus, Siberia, and the Volga region are in many ways reminiscent of the Russian villages of the 1950s and 60s. Positive natural growth has remained there longer, there are still many young people, people are ready to work in rural areas.
— Let's take a closer look at the socio-economic processes that take place in each of these territories.
— The main thing is to understand that the countryside does not necessarily have to be agricultural. The population of the first and second zones survives mostly through hunting, fishing, forestry, and mining. The further south you go, the greater the role of agriculture in the economy, the more actively the population is involved in it. The most painful processes are taking place today in the Non-Black Earth Region, from where agriculture is gradually disappearing, but people and the cultural layer still remain.
— You have thoroughly studied the Russian Non-Black Earth Region using the example of the Kostroma region, which has been the subject of several of your studies. Let's use it as a model.
— Non-Black Earth regions are characterized by very strong demographic and economic contrasts. While in the suburbs of regional centers the rural population has remained almost unchanged, outside the suburbs the population losses in the 20th century were great. And the further you are from a major city, the worse the situation. More than 70% of the population, primarily young and active, left the peripheral areas. And therefore, the natural decline is higher here.
The periphery of the remaining non-chernozem regions (the so-called outback, located between the suburbs of large cities) are areas with severe depopulation. But the remaining population, due to the decline of agriculture and the degradation of Soviet industry, has nothing to do in small towns. Approximately a third of the working age population in these villages is unemployed; pensioners and grandmothers predominate. And the remaining able-bodied men earn money “on waste” in the cities, half of them in Moscow and the Moscow region. Irreversible changes have also occurred in agriculture: the area under cultivation and the number of livestock have declined catastrophically. Today, the northern periphery of the rural Non-Black Earth Region survives partly at the expense of forests. Since Soviet times, it has been the custom that every collective farm had a free forest plot. Many of them held on to this. In 2007, the new Forest Code put agricultural enterprises on the same level as other forest tenants, which accelerated their bankruptcy. Now the remaining population survives partly by picking mushrooms and berries.
— The monstrous desolation of the periphery of the Non-Black Earth Region creates the feeling that rural Russia is dying out. Is it really?
- No. Even in the Non-Black Earth regions, mainly in the suburbs of regional capitals, there are steadily developing areas. This can be seen in many indicators. Suffice it to say that in the suburbs of Kostroma, 20% of its rural population and 25% of agricultural production are concentrated on four percent of the region’s territory. And enterprises in the form of agricultural cooperatives or new agricultural holdings are preserved here, and productivity is higher. It would seem, what difference does it make to a cow where to graze? And milk yield in the suburbs of the Non-Black Earth Region is always 2-3 times higher, and even grain yields are higher. The main reason is still human capital, but the infrastructure in the suburbs is also better and connections with the city are stronger.
Although the outback does not die completely and comes to life in the summer. Having “sucked out” the population, Moscow and St. Petersburg send troops of summer residents there, who not only concentrate in gardening partnerships, but buy up empty houses, thereby preserving the villages. But no one knows how many there are; the administration has stopped keeping records. Cadastral services do not provide data. Also, no one knows, except for the residents of the villages themselves, how many local residents go “on vacation” to the cities. And it turns out absurd: money is allocated to municipalities for the local population, but there is none, but citizens registered in Moscow live a long time. Elementary statistical accounting of all these massive return flows is long overdue, if only in order to understand what is happening in the country, where and how many people actually live and work.
In 2013, my colleagues and I decided to follow in the footsteps of Radishchev, visited all the former postal stations, studied the areas around and wrote two books about our journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow more than 200 years later. When you drive along the highway, all you see around you are fields overgrown with forests and miserable villages. Grain and flax production actually went away due to low yields and unprofitability. And meat production, for example, has increased. The fact is that there is a change in the types of management - large agricultural holdings are coming to this zone between the two capitals. They grow grain in their divisions in the south, and produce meat and milk here, closer to the consumer. The landscape under the new type of farming looks different than under the old collective farm. There is no need to plow up huge areas here. The cattle are purchased as purebred ones and kept loose in new modernized farms. There are also new milk and meat processing plants. But they are off the road, and the modern traveler does not see them.
Map provided by Tatyana Nefedova
— Against the backdrop of the subsidized Non-Black Earth Region, the south of Russia, its breadbaskets - Don, Kuban, Stavropol - look like a hotbed of prosperity.
— There was no such depopulation in the South; it was and remains attractive for migrants. And it’s not even about the size of the rural population. When the most active people leave from generation to generation, as in the Non-Black Earth Region, negative social selection occurs. This was not the case here. Therefore, the quality of human capital is different. However, there are serious problems here.
For example, in the west of Stavropol there are almost no abandoned lands; agricultural cooperatives and powerful agricultural holdings operate. And in the villages there is huge unemployment. Why? The fact is that it is profitable to sow grain here, but to develop livestock farming is not. Therefore, grain crops increased, and the number of livestock decreased sharply.
And the South of Russia consists of large villages and villages with a population of up to 10 thousand people. Essentially rural single-industry towns. With crop production prevailing, management needs 20 qualified machine operators and auxiliary workers - that's it! What will the others living in this village do? People survive through subsistence farming and labor. In the relatively prosperous Stavropol Territory, the total number of otkhodniks is greater than in the problematic Kostroma Region.
— All revolutions, all the most painful reforms of the last century and a half were in one way or another connected in Russia with the struggle for land. And it is obvious that this fight is still not over.
— In Russia there are two types of regions in which there is a real struggle for land. These are the suburbs of large cities, primarily capitals, and the southern regions. Firstly, land is too expensive and in demand by realtors and developers, so even quite successful agriculture is being squeezed out. In the south of Russia, where crop production is profitable, the struggle for land shares takes place within agriculture between different producers: collective farms, agricultural holdings, farmers. In other regions there is a huge amount of abandoned land, in which few people show interest.
— In developing countries, one of the main threats to farmers and independent agricultural enterprises is giant agricultural holdings. How is land distributed among different types of owners in Russia?
— Russia’s problem is not the land as such. And the point is to preserve the multi-structure of agriculture created in the 1990s, so that agricultural holdings, agricultural cooperatives, farmers, commercial and non-commodity farms of the population work. Of course, large modern enterprises have a number of advantages. They provide stable supplies to chain stores in large cities. Thanks to agricultural holdings, restoration of abandoned lands, livestock, pigs and poultry began after the crisis of the 1990s. All this is beyond the capabilities of small farms. However, there are also many negative consequences. Excessive gigantism creates difficulties in managing divisions of agricultural holdings scattered in different regions, especially since hired workers are not interested in results. By absorbing collective farms and farms, agricultural holdings increase the dependence of entire regions on one producer. The over-lending of most of them in the current conditions of sanctions has become a very serious problem and can lead to bankruptcies and mass layoffs.
— What is happening in Russia to the basis of any successful agriculture - farmers?
— There are a lot of farmers in the south. Only Caucasian peoples are engaged in livestock farming there. These are semi-shadow and shadow farms. No one knows how long they actually keep livestock in abandoned collective farm sheds. But Russian farmers, like collective farms, grow wheat and sunflowers. But in order for the income to justify the costs of equipment and fertilizers, at least 300-500 hectares of land are needed. With a land share of 10-15 hectares, this can only be achieved by renting the lands of other farmers and the population. We have more than once encountered a situation where, according to statistics, there are 50-60 farmers in an area, but in reality it turns out that there are only five of them. The rest leased the land to these five.
A significant part of our products (70% of vegetables, half of milk, a third of meat) is still produced by small semi-natural farms, mainly for self-sufficiency, although partly for sale. Since we do not have a middle class, the cohort of medium-sized enterprises is shrinking. And this lack of a stable middle ground that does not go to extremes is a big problem.
— Does the process of “washing out” the rural population in Russia have its own characteristics?
— Urbanization processes are characteristic of all countries, only some go through certain stages of urbanization earlier, others later. In Russia, throughout the twentieth century, the population left the countryside. The most active departure, oddly enough, was already in the post-war years. It seemed that the collective farms were working, wages in the countryside were growing, but the population still en masse flocked to the cities, where there were more opportunities for self-realization, training, development, other living conditions, etc.
Map provided by Tatyana Nefedova
In the 1990s, the depopulation of the rural population stopped somewhat; people from the Union republics, from the northern and eastern regions of Russia, moved to villages, even non-chernozem ones. The main thing was housing. But work was also needed, and a new stage in the attractiveness of cities began. This is especially true for large centers - urbanization in our country has not yet been completed. Nevertheless, sooner or later it will end. The attractiveness of large cities due to their overpopulation, transport collapse, and environmental problems is beginning to decline.
However, urbanization in Russia had two features that explain the severity of its consequences. Our vast space is characterized by a relatively sparse network of large cities with their suburbs that attract people. And between them, as a result of the outflow of population in the previously developed territories of the Non-Black Earth Region, a socio-economic desert was formed. There is no such thing in Europe. The second feature is related to the specifics of the collective farm and state farm organization, which did not adequately respond to the challenges of the time. In Western countries, the decrease in rural population stimulated changes in economic mechanisms, the introduction of new technologies to increase productivity, etc. And in the Non-Black Earth Region, flax and grains were buried under the snow, because there was no one to harvest them, and the sown areas were strictly controlled by party bodies. The rigidity of the economic mechanism was compensated by the highest agricultural subsidies in the world, and their sharp reduction led to disaster in many areas.
— Is it possible to stop the dangerous devastation of rural Russia?
— While people continue to leave. They go not only for work, although for work too. They want a different standard of living. Young people need a different social environment, different opportunities for self-realization; they can no longer be held back with just a salary. But if you can’t help, at least don’t push the rest out.
At the same time, in order to save money, which is incomparable with social losses, the authorities are accelerating the devastation of villages in areas of depopulation. Medical centers are closing - adult children are starting to take their elderly parents to the cities. Rural settlements are being united - outlying villages find themselves outside the gravitational field of the new settlement center, road repairs do not reach them, shops are closed, and food trucks do not operate. Rural primary schools are closing, not only school graduates are leaving, but also young families with children, since not every parent will decide to send a child to a boarding school or transport him tens of kilometers on bad roads every day on an unreliable bus. You can always find a way out. For example, in Tatarstan, in small villages, teachers' houses are created even for 2-3 children, where a primary school teacher will teach them to secondary school.
It is important to preserve the most basic infrastructure. After all, their children from the nearest city will come to grandmothers’ houses tomorrow, having retired. Summer residents, including those from Moscow, as a rule, also leave villages if there are no local residents left, since their houses begin to be destroyed without supervision. We must understand: when a village dies, the territory not only goes out of economic circulation. We are losing social control over it. And we need to preserve it until a new wave of space development in the center of Russia. For the next generation, which, under favorable conditions, will want to return here.
