gS RUSSIA - AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IN GENERAL 



live stock the proportionate increase or decrease differs very much in the 

 two classes of farms : on the lands of the Peasants' I,and Bank and the State 

 domains, where the newly bought land had to be cultivated, the number of 

 animals increased throughout on every farm ; but in the farms on nadiel 

 land, especially in the first years, the average number for each farm was shght- 

 ly diminished. The number of the horses was reduced from 24,507 to 23,589, 

 that is by 3.7 per cent ; that of the cows from 21,845 to 21,607, that is by 

 I.I per cent.; and the number of the sheep from 46,720 to 30,384, that is 

 by 35 per cent. 



The diminution of live stock is to be ascribed to the fact that when re- 

 movals took place, more or less spontaneously, to the self-contained farms 

 held in severaltj^ the earlier common meadows were in most cases done 

 away with, and the stall-feeding of live stock is as yet not practised to a 

 compensatory extent. The state of affairs is to be regarded however as 

 only transitory ; for as soon as all the elements existing in a farm have been 

 adjusted to the new factors affecting them, an increase in the number of 

 live stock occurs. This is noticeably so in the case of sheep, as to which 

 to accept the statement that in the new conditions of peasant farming their 

 number dwindles would be unjustifiable or at least premature. The inves- 

 tigations made at the Pultava experimental station have discovered, in 

 this connection, that sheep herded on meadows and fed in stalls are almost 

 equally profitable, and that the reduction in the number of sheep is transi- 

 tory. At the beginning of the land settlement, when farms were being 

 reorganized, the keeping of sheep diminished owing to the lack of meadows ; 

 but as the farm adjusted itself to the new conditions sheep, pasturing near 

 the homestead and fed at night with some summer grass and grass of the 

 steppes, appeared again (i). 



As regards cattle generally the decrease in their number is throughout 

 very small, especially if a calculation be based on a given area of land in- 

 stead of a single farm. It is then discovered than on every 100 deciatines 

 of all the land, whether newly settled or not, the following average number 

 of live stock is found. 



Young 

 Horses Cows stock Pigs 



In i^ixms, on nadiel Idind 11. 7 10.7 7.1 13. i 



» )) » bank » & State domains 11. 3 7.6 57 6.9 



It appears thus that, when the calculation is made for a given area, the 

 nadiel farms, although generally only half as large as those on bank lands 

 and State domains, are more richly pro\'ided with five stock. This relation 

 between the two classes of farms is particularly clear when the amount of 

 livestock held on farms of the two categories in single provinces is compared,. 

 as in the following tables. 



(i) Review of Agtarian Assistance given in the Districts of the Land Organization in the Govern- 

 ment of Pultava in 1914. Pubishcd by the Government Zemstvos of l*iiltava, 1915. p. 45. 



