Translated material
Pasha is missing
Elena Skrynnik promises to confiscate abandoned lands
The new Minister of Agriculture Elena Skrynnik spoke to State Duma deputies for the first time yesterday. The Ministry of Agriculture intends to get serious about collecting land assets. According to the minister, a fund of agricultural land could be created in the country, regulating their circulation and redistribution. Separately, the ministry intends to deal with uncultivated lands. According to Ms. Skrynnik, a mechanism is being developed to allow the confiscation of these lands.Federal budget expenditures on agriculture this year will amount to 2% of all budget expenditures. “At the beginning of the year, in light of anti-crisis measures, we had 112 billion rubles, but in the end we had 182 billion rubles,” Elena Skrynnik reported to the deputies. All targeted programs for agriculture are working, she assured, and banks plan to allocate 905 billion rubles for lending to the agricultural industry, including 521 billion rubles for investment loans. According to Ms. Skrynnik, “all the needs of agricultural producers for short-term credit resources are provided.”
The volume of interest rate subsidies this year will amount to more than 62 billion rubles. Through Rosagroleasing, 14 thousand units of domestic agricultural machinery were purchased, including 7,300 tractors, 4,600 cars and more than 2 thousand combines. “Russian Agricultural Bank and Sberbank will provide 122 billion rubles for spring field work, 20 billion of which will be used to purchase grain from the new harvest for the intervention fund,” the minister said. “We are now inspecting elevators and selecting 20-30 every day for interventions,” explained Elena Skrynnik. She said that a decision had been made to unload elevators in the south and center of the country. “To achieve this, we are working to open exports; a government order is being signed so that we can begin export operations. This will be 2 million tons of grain.”
According to scientists' forecasts, this year's grain harvest could reach 85-90 million tons. Last year it was a record for post-Soviet Russia - 108 million tons. According to Elena Skrynnik, carryover grain from last year's harvest could amount to about 20 million tons. Thus, the total grain reserves based on harvesting results can reach 105-110 million tons.
The agro-industrial part of the speech was a little more successful for the new minister than the conversation about land use regulation. Deputy Minister of Economic Development Igor Manylov came to the meeting with the deputies along with the head of the Ministry of Agriculture. He is in charge of the issues of land registration in the country. “Where did you divide the 150 million rubles allocated to you for cadastral registration, if in the country only 3.4% of land allocated for personal use is registered in the name of the owner?” - Nikolai Kharitonov, a deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, asked Mr. Manylov sternly. “This money was allocated when I was not yet involved in cadastre issues, but it was spent on the creation of 3 thousand service centers, on communication channels - the cadastral registration system works, and these are really necessary things,” the official tried to convince the deputies.
“What will we do with the abandoned 40 million hectares of land?” - Deputy Kharitonov did not retreat. Uncultivated, abandoned agricultural lands will be confiscated by the state, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture said. “Criteria are being developed to determine the misuse of land; according to these criteria, land will be confiscated or fines will be paid,” she said. In addition, the minister proposed to apply increased tax rates for inappropriate use of land.
“In terms of arable land area per capita, Russia is among the top five countries and is more than three times higher than the world average, but in terms of land use efficiency it lags noticeably behind. Over 15 years in Russia, the arable land area has decreased by more than 10 million hectares,” she noted minister Ms. Skrynnik noted that, with 9% of the world's farmland, Russia produces only one and a half percent of the gross domestic product of world agriculture. “There is a qualitative deterioration of the entire land resource potential, the fertility of land plots is declining,” the minister frightened the deputies. The composition of farmland, Ms. Skrynnik said, is about 12% waterlogged, 19% eroded and 18% saline soils. This year, 10 million rubles have been allocated to combat salinity.
She named the registration of land rights for agricultural producers as another problem in the agricultural sector. Of the 12 million owners of land shares, only 0.4 million have undergone state registration of rights. Meanwhile, only registered land can be used to obtain a loan. “Today, the volume of loans from Rosselkhozbank secured by agricultural land amounted to more than 7.5 billion rubles, the total area of the collateral land fund is 300 thousand hectares. Very small given the current land resources,” Ms. Skrynnik said.
In Russia, according to the minister, a fund of agricultural land can be created. The Fund will ensure full accounting of agricultural lands and control over their redistribution. The total area of agricultural land in the country exceeds 200 million hectares.
Deputies commented rather harshly on the new minister's speech. “We were waiting for the program, but we heard that everything is still bad in agriculture and nothing is working out. Instead of wondering why this is happening, we are again ready to create new control structures in this area,” said Irina Gorkova from the LDPR. “This is not surprising,” agreed communist Nikolai Kolomeytsev, “land reform is being carried out by the Ministry of Economic Development, and not the Ministry of Agriculture, which is now simply not authorized to give answers to questions about the progress of the reform.” “The confusion in land reform was laid down by Gref, and deputies of previous convocations forcibly pushed through crude laws on land law, not taking into account that out of 13 land reforms experienced by Russia, six led to land riots,” he said.