13 



Mr. Penny. It will take a minute or so to get the telephone hook- 

 up. 



These two farmers are part of a growing population of independ- 

 ent farmers within Russia. I think in just the last 4 years or so 

 we've seen growth from about 10,000 to 200,000 independent farm- 

 ers in that country. All of them, of course, are operating on parcels 

 of land that are, in a sense, rented to them or made available to 

 them, but not in a way that transfers ownership. As a consequence, 

 they are unable to borrow against the value of that land, and that, 

 among other difficulties, is a major impediment to modernizing and 

 expanding their operations. 



We'll be visiting with Vladimir Zamaratskii, one of the farmers 

 who was highlighted in the video. Vladimir is the one that kept re- 

 ferring to help from the U.S. Congress, so we certainly look forward 

 to a little bit of a dialog with him. 



In addition, we'll have on the line Dr. Eugenia Serova, a special 

 advisor to Agriculture Minister Viktor Khlystun. It will give us an 

 opportunity, I think, to ask her what steps they intend to take to 

 improve the situation for private farmers within their country. If 

 you were paying attention during the video, there seemed to be a 

 pretty heavy dose of criticism that the bureaucracy was still imped- 

 ing a movement toward private agriculture, and that the Yeltsin 

 administration didn't seem to be terribly interested in private agri- 

 culture at this point. 



Do we have them on the line? 



Hello. 



Mr. Zamaratskii [through translator] . Hello. 



Mr. Penny. Greetings from the U.S. Congress. We're delighted to 

 have both Vladimir and Eugenia with us this morning. 



I want to start with a question to Mr. Zamaratskii. We just 

 played a video in which he made some remarks about his efforts 

 to establish his farming operation. He made reference to the Mos- 

 cow Peasants' Union, and I'm curious to learn more about the peas- 

 ants' union and the kind of financial assistance that it has been 

 able to make available to beginning farmers. 



Mr. Zamaratskii. This union distributes massive credit through- 

 out the farmers in the Moscow region. The money comes from the 

 Government. 



Mr. Penny. And it can be used for capital acquisitions or simply 

 equipment? 



Mr. Zamaratskii. Originally, they were giving larger sums of 

 credit to farmers because there were very few farmers. Now there 

 are more farmers, and they're getting smaller amounts. Earlier 

 they were giving credits for machinery and construction of farm 

 buildings. Now they're giving credits for bujdng spring seeds. 



Mr. Penny. I know that Vladimir is in partnership or cooperation 

 with two other farmers, but as a general rule, have farmers consid- 

 ered the possibility of establishing cooperatives in which they pool 

 their resources and share their equipment and work together to es- 

 tablish processing and marketing capabilities? 



Mr. Zamaratskii. Life required us to do this. The farmers that 

 wanted to leave the state farm decided to break up into three or 

 four private farms and not only be involved in the production, but 

 also in the marketing of the product. 



