Russian Farmers Reap Rewards Of Organic Agriculture

article and photo by Sylvia Ehrhardt

The life of an organic farmer may be hard at times, but never dull. Since 1991, my husband and I have traveled to Russia on four different occasions meeting farmers and gardeners. We were volunteers for the Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI), an exceptionally effective nongovernmental organization based in San Francisco. CCI has sent over 100 tons of donated seed to some three million disadvantaged Russian farmers and gardeners and recruited volunteers to advise and assist these farmers in raising food organically. Gardening in Russia is not just a hobby, it's a necessity. Food production has fallen 40 percent since the old Soviet days, making the cost of food very high on the new free market. Fortunately, about 50 percent of Russians have access to dachas, which produce 30 percent of the total food grown in the country and 80 percent of the vegetables. Every inch of dacha soil is cultivated and the harvest is preserved for Russia's long, cold winter.

My husband and I have traveled extensively to give lectures and workshops on organic growing for CCI and we have found genuine interest in organic and sustainable agriculture everywhere. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, chemical fertilizers and pesticides have become both scarce and expensive. Russian fertilizer plants are currently working at just 30-35 percent of capacity and export most of what they produce. Many of the huge state farms have gone bankrupt and parcels of their land are being distributed to the new private farmers, generally former state farm employees or discharged servicemen with little agriculture experience. Farmers and gardeners are left with no fertilizers or pesticides and no idea of how to grow without them. Information on alternative approaches to agriculture does not exist because in Soviet times, anyone who tried anything but the official approach could be imprisoned. Most of the farmers we met had not used chemicals for three years and their crop yields had been progressively lower. In some regions, farmers were also dealing with soil depletion and degradation that had the potential to become irreversible.

The Sergiev Posad Project

While my husband and I were in Moscow for CCI in 1993, we decided to take a weekend break and go sightseeing in nearby Sergiev Posad, where we were told there were beautiful churches and an old monastery. While there, we were surprised to be invited to meet with the agriculture administrator for the Sergiev Posad region. It turns out that local farmers, unable to get their hands on chemical fertilizers, had turned to organic farming. As both the regional government and the All-Russian Agriculture College (ARAC) had no resources for organic agriculture, the farmers decided to create an organic farmers' association. Ever since, the association had been trying to drum up some type of government support for sustainable agriculture. Sergiev Posad's agriculture administrator, hearing that there were two organic farmers in town, leapt at the opportunity to take advantage of our experience.

The administrator told us about the 1993 potato crop disaster, when local farmers had actually brought in a good harvest and were expecting to sell their crop to the Federal government as was customary. However, in line with the new economic reforms, the government had already purchased its potatoes from Poland. With no other markets and no transportation, several hundred thousand tons of potatoes rotted in the fields. We also heard about the region's problems with declining production and the lack of supplies and equipment. In turn, we talked about our experience in teaching sustainable methods that do not rely on chemical pesticides and fertilizer. Hearing this, the administrator asked for our help in making information on sustainable agriculture and marketing available to the newly privatized farmers. He pledged his support to us and CCI subsequently agreed to work in Sergiev Posad.

The Sergiev Posad project has since blossomed into a comprehensive program. CCI established a partnership with the Sergiev Posad ARAC and in January 1994 sent five instructors over to lecture on sustainable agriculture to the faculty. The notes and materials from these lectures were then translated and distributed to agriculture schools throughout Russia. As ARAC is the flagship for 285 Russian agricultural colleges and is responsible for their curriculum and publications, the four-year sustainable agriculture curriculum that they developed with CCI's instructors will eventually be taught in all 285 agriculture colleges. These colleges, which graduate 14,000 students yearly, are the only educational institutions that deal directly with farmers.

In 1994, CCI and ARAC teamed up to create the first Russian sustainable agriculture extension service, called the Farming Development Service (FDS). Extension services, where agencies operate out of agriculture universities to provide information to local farmers on growing and marketing crops, have no history in Russia. In the Soviet era, each state farm was expected to have its own stable of resident experts. When this system broke down, farmers needed to find new ways to access information on low-cost sustainable agriculture techniques. The Sergiev Posad model extension service was started with the cooperation of the regional government, the local organic farmers' association and CCI, and with funding from a small, one-year grant from ISAR. The grant included only the extension agent's salary, a computer, a fax and a Xerox copier; ARAC donated the office space and the phone line. Since then, the FDS staff, which now consists of an extension agent and an assistant, has spent hundreds of hours with farmers helping to solve a variety of problems, from reducing chemical inputs to marketing crops.

In September 1994, my husband and I were asked to return and give further help to regional farmers trying to develop markets for their chemical-free crops. As the farmers were in limbo between the old centralized system and the new free market system, they had no experience with marketing. When we arrived, we found out that the farmers hoped to sell their crops at a county fair, a method that had been suggested to them by an American instructor. They wanted us to help them to organize the fair, which was scheduled for less than a month away.

Neither my husband nor I had ever put together a country fair before, never mind in such a short time period, but the farmers were desperate for help. We publicized the fair through the Russian and foreign press in Moscow and faxed fair announcements to food distributors, processors, wholesalers and foreign embassies in Moscow. Working with FDS, we developed displays and written materials to be handed out to fairgoers. Farmers exhibiting at the fair sold all of their 1994 harvest and received contracts for 1995 crops. The exhibition was declared a huge success and since then, three farmers' fairs have been held in Sergiev Posad. Contracts signed at these fairs have totaled nearly $200,000 and have kept many private farmers in business. Word of the fairs has led to requests to form FDS organizations in other communities and FDS has since traveled to many regions to discuss extension services and sustainable agriculture methods.

FDS's popularity in Sergiev Posad has led the Ministry of Agriculture to take a closer look at the project. In April 1997, Yuri Lachuga, the Ministry of Agriculture Education Chief, requested that the FDS train one extension agent to work at each of the 285 agriculture colleges. He also created 11 regional extension centers to provide training on organic agriculture, farm management and marketing to Russian agriculture consultants, managers, college instructors, state farm chiefs and the new extension agents. CCI recently received support from USAID to expand the FDS sustainable agriculture extension model to six of the Ministry's 11 regional centers. Extension directors and managers from these six sites will undergo training in the US in January and February 1998. This training will focus on teaching sustainable agriculture, farm management and marketing through extension services.

My husband and I are now CCI Agriculture Advisors for Sustainable Agriculture Initiatives in Russia. Last year, I was appointed to represent CCI and sustainable agriculture on the Advisory Board of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission's Agriculture Committee in the Research, Education and Extension working group. In the future, I hope that Russian and US support of sustainable agriculture will create joint research projects to promote less toxic means of dealing with pest and disease problems, to clean polluted soil and water and to improve soil fertility. I feel very fortunate to be part of all this. Pretty exciting stuff for a couple of organic farmers from the Blue Ridge mountains of Maryland.

Sylvia Ehrhardt of Ehrhardt Organic Farm grows certified organic produce in Knoxville, MD.

Center for Citizen Initiatives, The Presidio of San Francisco, General Kennedy Avenue, PO Box 29912, San Francisco, CA 94129; phone: (415) 561-7777; fax: (415) 561-7778, e-mail: cciusa@igc.org