From the editor

This “OZ” number stands out from the general series. Having chosen an agricultural topic, we suddenly found ourselves in a force field of such tension that does not fit well with calm analysis. The oil, gas or, for example, metallurgical industries have long been divided, but the land is still far away, and there are serious battles for it. The state pumps a lot of money into agriculture, and since the criteria for who should be helped and in what amount are blurred, even those who do not grow anything at all and do not fatten anyone are trying to get a bite of this pie. In 2004, the magazine already published an issue about land No. 1 (15). Then there was a need to take stock of the fundamental transformation of land relations that occurred in the late 1980s - mid-1990s. It seemed that the most painful stage of reform had been passed and, despite all the troubles, the clearly emerging growth in agricultural production proved that the right direction had been chosen. But the following year, mass protests by workers in the agricultural sector swept across the country, in which farmers took a particularly active part. They were dissatisfied with everything: the monopoly of numerous intermediary firms that buy agricultural products cheaply and sell at exorbitant prices to peasants everything they need to do business; unfair distribution of state aid, the lion's share of which was (and is) received by agricultural holdings and large agricultural enterprises; mass purchase of land by powerful commercial structures. All this could be attributed to the costs of the transition period, but the farmers understood well that most of their troubles were due to the fact that the state essentially abandoned the principle of multi-structure and relied on large agribusiness. Actually, this was not hidden: a major agricultural official then said to one of the authors of OZ: “Those farmers who exist, let them work, but we will not create poverty.”

Almost a decade has passed since then; the capitalist agricultural sector, fueled by state aid, is swelling and swelling, while the farming sector is surviving more than it is living. Is this good for the country or bad? - the main question that the editors of OZ asked themselves when starting a new issue. If we keep in mind that, having collapsed during the 2008 crisis, agricultural production is steadily growing, then good. But most of the volume's authors do not share this view. They defend the opposite view, and do it with such passion that their texts look more like political declarations than analytical articles. Poverty, farming apologists say, is caused by large enterprises, since they release a lot of workers, and those, left without funds, either eke out a miserable existence in the countryside or leave for the city. To preserve the village, it is necessary to develop farming in every possible way, since it is more efficient than the corporate sector, and there is an abundance of unused land in Russia. The fact that the farming sector is marking time is to blame for the state, which practically does not help it, and most importantly, does not develop infrastructure, without which the family farm will always lose to the large one. Since the editors do not have, and cannot have, their own opinion on this issue, they kept the door open for those who think differently. However, neither government officials, who de facto pursue a policy of supporting predominantly large agribusiness, nor representatives of this sector themselves have shown much activity. The former, perhaps, because they are not too fond of discussing, as they would have said before, the party line, and the latter are simply satisfied with the current state of affairs: nine-tenths of state aid goes to them, there are practically no restrictions on the size of land holdings (this does not exist anywhere in well-organized countries) , and the land relations themselves are so confused that in this troubled water, large fish can devour small ones without any hesitation.

If, more than twenty years after the start of the reforms, the debate about whether some bad guys ruined Russian agriculture (and the whole country) or whether it itself collapsed has largely lost relevance, then the same cannot be said about the search for an answer to the question of how to equip it .