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I am also a sheep farmer. I am very grateful to have the oppor- 

 tunity to go on many VOCA assignments in countries ranging from 

 Poland to Kazakhstan. I have had the opportunity to work on dif- 

 ferent projects from developing the first private meat processing 

 plant in Poland that is privately owned, to working with groups 

 from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland to trade wool for trac- 

 tors. 



I have also worked with other organizations that are financed 

 under the AID program, including the Cochran Fellowship Founda- 

 tion, Communicating for Agriculture, ACDI, and Georgetown Uni- 

 versity. Last summer under the auspices of VOCA, I had the oppor- 

 tunity to work and live with the new private farmers in the 

 Ivanovo region of Russia. There are approximately 200,000 private 

 farmers in Russia with 2.4 workers per farm for a total of 480,000 

 private farmers and more than 1 million people living on these pri- 

 vate farms in Russia. * 



Many of the new private farmers came from state and collective 

 farm systems and a lot of them are specialists in various agricul- 

 tural areas with management expertise in farming. Many farmers, 

 both private and state farms, told me the food that America sends 

 to Russia is making things worse for Russian farmers, and ulti- 

 mately it will affect all of Russia, as farmers are not receiving 

 prices high enough to provide a profit. 



They said as long as Russian leaders know the United States of 

 America will furnish cheap food, this situation will continue. Sev- 

 eral top Russian agricultural officials in Moscow told me this policy 

 will eventually hurt everyone in Russia. Large state farms are now 

 producing less because there is no profit incentive and thus are less 

 rubles to purchase all other consumable goods. 



Business and industry will eventually feel the squeeze and this 

 will mean fewer jobs. They asked me, a farmer myself, "how Amer- 

 ican farmers would like it if Australia or New Zealand or another 

 country would ship milk and meats to the United States at prices 

 lower than American farmers can produce it?" I had to admit I did 

 not appreciate the competition any more than they do. 



But on the bright side, private farmers are becoming more impor- 

 tant in furnishing the Russian food supply. In 1992, it is estimated 

 that private farmers produced 10 percent of the bread wheat in the 

 country and on only 3 percent of the land. Private farms and gar- 

 deners are producing over half of the fruit and vegetables in Rus- 

 sia, including 60 to 70 percent of the potatoes. This shows again 

 that production and efficiency increase with independent farmers. 



I am a Wisconsin sheep farmer. I see a lot of similarity between 

 Russia and a baby lamb born in a January snowstorm in northern 

 Wisconsin. If the shepherd chooses to go out in the cold to bring 

 in the newborn baby lamb where it is protected from the storm, 

 dries it off, warms it up, gives it some life-giving colostrum and 

 then shows the lamb how to find its mother's milk, the lamb will 

 survive and grow and become a healthy productive member of the 

 flock. 



If the shepherd chooses to stay in the warm house, rationalizing 

 that he has other things to worry about and leaves the mother and 

 natural consequences to take care of the situation, there is a 90 



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