Konstantin TITOV Priorities Agricultural Policy

Priorities

Agricultural Policy

During the last decade the agriculture of Russia and Samara Oblast has suffered considerably in comparison to other industries. There have been a lot of reasons for this: on the one hand due to the inconsistent policy of authorities it has become cheaper to export food products than to make purchases in adjacent regions; on the other hand it has been impossible to instantly rearrange the existing style of life according to european standards ; besides, there are no federal laws on private landed property; the lack of financial and technological resources has also caused problems in agricultural industry.

But we have not stopped going ahead under such difficult conditions. While the possible ways of land reforms and land laws had been discussed, new laws ensuring the right of land property have already been worked out and carried into effect in Samara Oblast. We managed to retain cattle-breeding system and to work out the basis of elite seed-growing.

Not only economy sector is implied by agriculture. It is our past. We are indebted to land-toilers. We should support them on the state level. It is obvious that it is useless to distribute the budget funds on all agricultural industry and there are no funds available. Therefore, agricultural industry will get assistance in the following;

• The funds from the regional budget will be primarily allocated on the elite seed-growing and cattle-breeding and implementation of advanced technologies and projects of regional importance. We are to restore production in large pig-breeding and poultry farms.
• Purchasing and sales societies offering transport services and supplying fodder for private farms are to set up:
• Machine and tractor stations, using machinery 2 or 3 times effectively than ordinary farms are to be established.
• Budgetary funds will be allocated to purchase new highly productive machinery and advanced technologies. The Administration has spent 80,000,000 roubles to purchase 100 new combine harvesters. 600,000,000 roubles will be spent on further development of the agricultural industry in 2000.
• Comprehensive programmes of melioration and land fertility improvement will be implemented.
• Land mortgage will be fostered and conditions to attract private investment will be created. The farmer will have the opportunity to be granted credits against land mortgage.

The implemention of this programme will make it possible to supply the population of the region with provision grains and to reduce costs by 2 - 3 times and increase crops productivity by 1,5-2 times.

Apart from supporting and developing the agricultural industry we shall continue fundamentally improving standards of living in rural areas. In 1991 gas was supplied to 29% of all houses, at present -76%. And this programme is still going on. We are targetted at implementing this programme in 7 more areas to supply with gas the most remote rural areas.