190 



The heart of the matter 1b not complicated. The Central Planning system 

 for agriculture and food, headquartered in Moscow, has, over the 

 generations of the communist era, literally directed each unit of 

 production in the Soviet food system where to go with the food of each 

 particular unit of the system, ordering how much tonnage or units to 

 deliver, what each unit's qpiota of production would be, when to ship and 

 most Importantly, at what price to sell. The Agriculture and Food Central 

 Planning Bureau in Moscow, at its peak, employed more than 400,000 people 

 to direct the food production and distribution system within the Soviet 

 system. 



Is it any wonder, then, that so much of the grain, oilseeds and other 

 foodstuffs produced never received timely nor revenue meaningful 

 decisions. Consequently, the grain either rotted in the field or lacking 

 storage and transportation laid in bags alongside of the fields, and 

 produced a harvest of the fattest rats in the world, combining with 

 insects and birds gorging on the unprotected grain and with inclement 

 weather adding the final piece of loss to the unprotected total. 



Current Russian presidential staff and leadership knows this and 

 desperately wants to privatize Russian farms so that the profit motive 

 prevails and that decisions will be made by -the cooperatives, ^:he 

 collectives and -the private farmers themselves to do what must be done to 

 protect and preserve grain and oilseed supplies. 



The goal is simple t find a way to reduce harvest losses to save 30 

 million tons of lost grain; it then follows, no need to import 30 million 

 tons of grain and the final sequence, do not spend three billion dollars. 

 The waste and spoilage problems plaguing the F.S.u. 's existing 

 agricultural system are partly attributable to the use of large grain 

 storage facilities that are not well distributed throughout the 

 countryside and cannot be relocated to reflect changing needs. Moreover, 

 the collectives and private farms have no option at this time but to sell 

 and ship their grain to the government and receive in exchange prices that 

 are approximately 1/5 of the world market price. Economic survival for 

 the farmer at these disastrous prices is not possible. 



How to save 30 million tons of grain and give the Russian farmer a chance 

 to survive? The answer: private storage at the farm level. Without 

 farm storage the farmer must ship to the huge distant state enterprise 

 silos. And, get paid 20% of the world fair price, or don't ship and waste 

 the 20-25% of the grain. 



Let me say this again because this is a critical part of Russian rural 

 existence. If the Russian farm and farmer have an alternative method to 

 store its and his grain, the waste is negated, the prices received can 

 increase dramatically and the private farm under private land ownership 

 will become the critical, new important feature of the total Russian 

 economy . 



In all of our travels throughout Russia, we've come to one conclusion: 

 without new and economic farm grain storage the Russian state farmer and 

 farm will never get a fair price for their product. with a new, 

 alternative choice for crop storage, the Russian farm and farmer can break 



