The Rural Voice, 1996-08, Page 12Robert Mercer
Making better use of what we have
Food per capita on a world-wide
basis is getting less as population grows
and grain production growth levels
stagnate. However, I was reminded by
an article in a magazine this past month
that the western world has done without
before, and done well.
During the Second World War the
Minister of Agriculture in England
asked for half a million new home
garden "allotments" to help provide for
any food shortages in fruits and
vegetables. In the next year, 1940,
another three million "allotments" or
garden plots were established for home
gardening. These intensive -care small
holdings filled that gap under the
banner of "Dig for Victory" and in the
official record it is noted "By a
combination ... of increased home
production with conservation measures
it proved possible to sustain a nation in
health and efficiency on imports that,
for the last three years of the war,
averaged only half the pre-war figures."
I get the impression that the same
type of realignment of food uses is
happening in the Former Soviet Union
(FSU). Grain production in the FSU has
taken such a tumble in the official
figures, as have imports, that it is
difficult to see how food supplies have
been maintained above starvation levels
without small plot
support. This
switch to small
holding is nothing
new, but with the
introduction of
private land
owncrship in 1991
its importance to
the economy has
grown. By 1994
there were 81,628
private farms in
Russia alone
which may not
seem too many.
but with the
bureaucracy need-
ed to validate the farms, it is remarkable
that any got established at all.
Grain production in the FSU will be
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8 THE RURAL VOICE
better this year. The estimated grain
harvest is 145 million metric tonnes, up
from the poor harvest of 1995/96 at 120
million tonnes. It was only five years
ago that the USSR, as it was then
called, harvested over 200 million
tonnes. The record harvest was in
1978/79 at 216 million tonnes.
One of the reasons for the drop in
grain production in the FSU has been
less land in production. This is
especially so in Kazakhstan where the
Virgin Lands were first put to the plow
in the 1950s.
The "New Lands" are now being
taken out of production and returned to
clear fallow. Seeding this year in the
FSU is estimated to be down 20 million
hectares below the peak some 20 years
ago. (Canada's total wheat acres this
year is estimated by Stats Can at close
to 27 million acres, up 19 per cent from
last year. This is about half what has
been lost in the FSU, 10.9 million ha.)
The FSU with its credit problems
will likely import less than 10 million
tonnes of grains this year, far short of
the 30 million it imported when credit
and gold sales made imports easier.
What the FSU has done in part is to
reduce the livestock herd to cut grain
consumption, but it is also doing in part
what England did some 50 years ago.
When push comes to shove we can all
do better with less, or with what we
have. We may be looking at food
shortages, record grain prices and food
price inflationary pressures, but famine
is more of a distribution problem than
an actual acute food shortage. Unfortu-
nately it is once again the poor that
suffer the most as costs rise and interna-
tional aid agency budgets get chopped.
The other positive note to take from
the FSU example is that the twelve
states that make up the FSU have the
resources to become grain exporters if
they can ever get their act together.
They have the land base, the climate,
and they have the technology if they
learn to use it. They also have the
ability to make the equipment needed,
the fertilizer to use and the pesticides to
improve production. When politics and
the economy come together in rural
FSU, then the world may well have
another grain exporter.0
Robert Mercer is the founding editor of the
Broadwater Market Letter for which he
continues to write market and ag-politica!
commentary.