21.04.2016
Now Russia Makes an Organic Revolution
As
if it were not enough that Vladimir Putin’s Russia makes a monkey out
of the US “anti-ISIS” campaign in Syria by accomplishing more in
six months to damage the terrorist advance in that country than the
Pentagon managed, with its suspiciously ineffective campaign in fourteen
months. Now Russia delivers a huge slap in the face to US agribusiness
domination of global food trade by deciding to make Russia the world’s largest exporter of healthy, non-GMO, non-industrial food.
Ignored by western media, as are most
positive developments in Russia, President Vladimir Putin made his
annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly Address on December
3. In his remarks he announced the national goal for Russia to become
food self-sufficient within four years–by 2020.
One of the least commented sectors of
the Russian economy—especially by superficial western economists who
imagine Russia is merely an oil and gas export-dependent country much
like Saudi Arabia or Qatar—is the significant transformation underway in
Russian agriculture. Today, less than a year and a half into the
decision to ban exports of major EU agriculture imports as a retaliation
to the silly EU sanctions on Russia, Russia’s domestic farm production
is undergoing a remarkable rebirth, or, in some cases, birth. In dollar
terms, Russian exports of agriculture products exceed in value that of
weapons, and equal a third of gas export profits. That’s interesting in
itself.
President Putin told the assembled members of the parliament in his December speech, a Russian state of the nation review:
Our agriculture sector is a positive example. Just a decade ago we imported almost half of our food products and critically depended on imports, whereas now Russia has joined the exporters’ club. Last year Russia’s agricultural exports totaled almost $20 billion. This is a quarter more than our proceeds from arms sales or about one third of our profits from gas exports. Our agriculture has made this leap in a short but productive period. Many thanks to our rural residents.I believe we should set a national goal — fully provide the internal market with domestically produced foods by 2020. We are capable of feeding ourselves from our own land, and importantly, we have the water resources. Russia can become one of the world’s largest suppliers of healthy, ecologically clean quality foods that some Western companies have stopped producing long ago, all the more so since global demand for such products continues to grow.
As a further measure, President Putin
called on the Duma to enact measures to bring millions of hectares of
now-idle arable land into use:
It is necessary to put to use millions of hectares of arable land that is now idle. They belong to large land owners, many of whom show little interest in farming. How many years have we been talking about this? Yet things are not moving forward. I suggest withdrawing misused agricultural land from questionable owners and selling it at an auction to those who can and want to cultivate the land.
The agriculture shift
Beginning with Vladimir Putin’s first
presidency, in 2000 Russia began to transform its agriculture
production. During the disastrous Yeltsin years in the 1990’s, Russia
imported a huge portion of its food. That was in part due to a misplaced
belief that everything “Made in America” or in the West was better.
Russia imported tasteless factory farm US mass-produced poultry instead
of promoting her superior-tasting, natural, free-roaming chickens. The
country imported artificially colored, tasteless tomatoes from Spain or
Holland instead of the delicious, succulent home-grown organic tomatoes.
I know; I’ve had both. There’s no comparison. The organic Russian food
trumps the western dishonest, adulterated industrial products today
mis-labeled as food.
What was not understood in the Yeltsin
era was that the food quality of those western imports had drastically
declined since introduction of American “agri-business” and factory food
in the 1970’s. The EU followed suit with its imitation of US industrial
methods, only a bit less extreme. Further, intensive use of chemical
fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics which pass through
animals into the fields, all have led to the dramatic depletion of
essential micro-organisms in American and, increasingly, EU agriculture
soils. As well, that has become true in China also according to
well-informed agronomists.
In the United States, the Congress at
the end of 2015 repealed a long-standing meat labeling law, the
Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) law, that required retailers to
explicitly state the country of origin on all red meat. Beef and pork
packages in the US will no longer be required to bear a label saying
where the animal originally came from. The US agribusiness lobbied for
the change to allow them to import meat of dubious quality from
developing countries where health and safety controls, and costs, are
minimal. In many US agribusiness states where the industry has huge
factors farm feeding operations, so-called “Ag-gag” state laws prohibit
journalists to even photograph those industrial agricultural operations,
often large dairy, poultry and pork farms. That’s
because if the general public realized what is done to put meat on the
US dinner table, they would go vegetarian en masse.
From net importer to exporter
During the Soviet era, especially after
1972, as Soviet harvest failures created shortages, the USSR used its
oil dollars to become a major importer of US wheat and grain. US grain
cartel companies like Cargill and Continental Grain worked with US
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to negotiate astronomical prices to
Russia in what was called “the great grain robbery.” US taxpayers were robbed by US grain subsidies. Cargill smiled all the way to the bank.
By 2000, Russia, along with Ukraine, and
to a lesser extent, Kazakhstan, reversed that import dependency for
grain and once more became a giant in the world export of grain and
especially wheat as it had been before the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Even before the US sanctions crisis, in
2011-2013, Russia exported on average 23 million metric tons (mmt) of
grain a year. Combined, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan sold 57 mmt
abroad. The three countries as a region supplied 19% of total world
grain exports over that period, and 21% of wheat exports, displacing the
United States as the world’s biggest wheat exporter.
Now, with Ukraine a de facto failed
state owing to the US State Department and Obama Administration February
2014 coup d’etat in Kiev, the importance of Russian agriculture is
becoming of world strategic importance in terms of high-quality organic
food and grains.
The 2014 Russian ban on select EU food
goods was a major turning point in retrospect, turning a crisis into an
opportunity as the ancient Chinese proverb says. Of Russia’s $39 billion
of total agricultural and food imports in 2013, $23.5 billion were in
the product categories affected by the ban, 61% of all food imports in Russia. The
recent added decision to ban all Turkish food imports, as sanction for
Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian jet on Syrian airspace, adds to that
banned import total. The Turkish food import ban took effect on January
1.
While many Western economists pointed to
the initial large inflation impact of the ban last year, a factor
leading the Russian Central Bank to hold interest rates dangerously high
too long, the longer-term reality is that the ban forced a dramatic
turn to agriculture self-sufficiency. As the more expensive imported
foods disappear from supermarket shelves across Russia, so too will the
initial 2015 food price inflation.
The most recent ruble fall amid the
global fall in dollar-denominated oil prices to $28 a barrel at last
setting, will further reduce Russian consumption of more expensive
remaining EU food imports in favor of “made in Russia.” Far from a
disaster as the New York Times and other western media gleefully
proclaim, the latest ruble fall will turn into a benefit for Russia’s
agriculture economy and even overall economy. That
will greatly boost the self-sufficiency goals. Russia’s food import
restrictions are unlikely to end anytime soon, even were the EU to drop
its sanctions on Russia. There’s too much at stake now for the national
economy in developing high-quality organic non-GMO agriculture.
In addition to Russia’s deciding on
agriculture self-sufficiency by 2020, the September 2015 official
Russian ban on all GMO agriculture crops set the stage for the latest
decision by the President to turn adversity into a virtue.
That beautiful Russian black earth
Russia also has an extraordinary natural
advantage to become today the world’s most important producer and also
exporter of high-quality organic and non-GMO food.
Russia today has some of the richest
most fertile agriculture soil in the world. Because during the Cold War
economic restraints dictated that products of the chemical industry were
dedicated to national defense needs, the fertile Russian soil has not
been subjected to decades of destruction from chemical fertilizers or
crop spraying as the soils in much of the west. Now this becomes a
blessing in disguise, as EU and North American farmers struggle with the
destructive effects of chemicals in their soils that have largely
destroyed essential micro-organisms. Rich agriculture soils take years
to create and can be destroyed in no time. Where the climate is moist
and warm, it takes thousands of years to form just a few centimeters of
soil. Cold dry climates need far longer.
Russia encompasses one of only two soil
belts in the world known as “Chernozem belts.” It runs from Southern
Russia into Siberia across Kursk, Lipetsk, Tambov and Voronezh Oblasts.
Chernozem, Russian for black soil, are black-colored soils with a high
percentage of humus, phosphoric acids, phosphorus and ammonia. Chernozem
is very fertile soil producing a high agricultural yield. The Russian
Chernozem belt stretches from Siberia and southern Russia into northeast
Ukraine, on to the Balkans along the Danube.
Initial results very positive
The initial results of the emphasis on
domestic Russian agriculture self-sufficiency and overall development
are quite positive. Since the August 2014 EU food import ban was
imposed, production of beef and potatoes has increased by 25%, of pork
by 18%, of cheese and cottage cheese by 15%, of poultry meat by 11%, and
of butter by 6%. The 2015 Russian vegetable harvest was also a record,
with output overall growing by 3%.
The foolish US sanctions and economic
warfare against Russia are producing the opposite of what the globalist
free trade advocates demand. It is forcing Russia, wisely, to walk away
from the agribusiness-draftedWTO agreements. Cargill wrote the WTO
Agreement on Agriculture. It’s forcing Russia to abandon the liberal
western free-flow of international food goods. Demands for a national
self-sufficiency in one of the most strategic of all economic goods, if
not the most strategic–a nation’s food quality. Russia wisely has
decided it takes priority over the “rights” of a Cargill or ADM or
Monsanto to trade freely. Russia’s agriculture revolution is an example
for the rest of the world to look at. It’s about quality over quantity.
Quality nutrition is about more than yields per hectare.
F. William Engdahl is
strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics
from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and
geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/21/now-russia-makes-an-organic-revolution/
http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/21/now-russia-makes-an-organic-revolution/