Habitually a great deal of attention is paid to the countryside and agriculture on the eve of elections in Ukraine. This year, marked as the Year of the Dog by the Oriental calendar, has been designated as the Year of the Countryside here and hopefully dedicated to the people who live there. However, to work out a complex of measures is much easier than protect these people from all kinds of trouble like bird flue or declining milk purchasing prices (owing to the Russian ban on Ukrainian farming imports) that marked the start of the year.
The modern countryside is a mass of pressing economic and social problems; with each passing day these problems are turning this part of Ukraine into a growing poverty zone. At the end of last year parliament had hearings on the issue. Among other things it was noted that crises in the rural production sphere are reflected in the social, cultural, and domestic ones. There is one communal service center per five villages; 60% of the villages have no post offices; 28% hard surface roads. In 1990, there were 12,600 preschool establishments enrolling 43% of the children in the rural areas; in 2004 the number had dropped to 8,200 attended by 23% children. The number of rural cultural facilities is also decreasing. In 2004, 280 rural paramedic and obstetrical stations had no medical staff. I believe that the number is larger now — or that these stations have been closed. And this considering that the Day of Health was supposed to embrace one hundred percent of the population.
However, production sphere is the key phrase in the above paragraph. If it shows positive dynamics, other countryside problems will start being solved. This year’s budget for the first time envisages two billion hryvnias worth of subsidies earmarked for agricultural producers. Every hectare sown with grain and every kilo of meat sold will be subsidized All told, government support of the countryside, including appropriations for the social sphere, is to reach almost 10 billion hryvnias.
Strangely, given such potential funds, Ukraine reduced the winter grain plantations by 18.8 percent in 2005. Add here the difficult weather conditions. According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, up to 22 million hectares will have to be replanted, which means using additional material and technical resources. The ministry estimates the need of the countryside in turnover assets for the complex of spring field operations at 16.2 billion hryvnias and says that the agrarian producers can cover 47 percent of these needs with their own funds. Fuel prices have sharply increased. Last year some 2 million hryvnias was spent on fuel; this year it will be more than 3 billion.
Will the Day of Government, scheduled for Feb. 14 at the Verkhovna Rada, solve these and many other problems that are already qualified as a system crisis? Yevhen Lenh, deputy CEO of the company Ukrzernoprom, told The Day that “I see no system crisis in the Ukrainian agroindustrial complex because the tax legislation treats the [agricultural] producers very liberally.” He believes that “there is a problem with investments in agriculture, caused by the absence of consensus on land sales in this country. There are things that have to be worked out, of course, but I attribute all that talk about a system crisis in the countryside to election campaign projects.” One can only hope that this diagnosis of rural health will prove correct.
