Little fish, big fish and the protein pyramid (IHT)

NYT EDITORIAL

Monday, November 10, 2008
Per capita meat consumption more than doubled over the past half-century as the global economy expanded. It is expected to double again by 2050. Which raises the question, what does all that meat eat before it becomes meat?
Increasingly the answer is very small fish harvested from the ocean and ground into meal and pressed into oil. According to a new report by scientists from the University of British Columbia and financed by the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, 37 percent by weight of all the fish taken from the ocean is forage fish: small fish like sardines and menhaden. Nearly half of that is fed to farmed fish; most of the rest is fed to pigs and poultry.
The problem is that forage fish are the feedstock of marine mammals and birds and larger species of fish. In other words, farmed fish, pigs and poultry - and the humans who eat them - are competing for food directly with aquatic species that depend on those forage fish for their existence. It's as if humans were swimming in schools in the ocean out-eating every other species.
The case is worse than that. When it comes to farmed fish, there is a net protein loss: It takes three pounds of fish feed to produce one pound of farmed salmon. This protein pyramid - small fish fed to farmed fish, pigs and poultry that are then fed to humans - is unsustainable. It threatens the foundation of oceanic life.
The report's authors suggest that it would be better if humans ate these small fish, as many cultures once did, instead of using them as feed. That is one way of addressing the problem of net protein loss.
The real answers are support for sustainable agriculture in the developing world and encouraging healthy, less meat-based eating habits as a true sign of affluence everywhere.

Have you written to Farm Blogs From Around the World recently?

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BRAZIL: Agribusiness faces multiple anxieties (IHT)

Oxford Analytica
Monday, November 10, 2008
The financial crisis and subsequent credit squeeze, coupled with global recession fears, are having a serious impact on agriculture and agribusiness, a crucial source of both foreign exchange and employment.
Elusive finance. The sharp drop in the value of the real has in theory largely compensated for the fact that prices of most grains and oilseeds have fallen by 30% since mid-year highs; if the exchange rate remains weak, farmers will receive significantly more in the local currency in which most expenses are incurred. However, exchange rate uncertainty is making trade finance difficult to obtain, both for exporters and many importing countries.
The government has injected some 15 billion dollars into currency markets in recent weeks, more than half of that amount from international reserves, in part in a bid to get more money to farmers and to finance trade. However, banks are presently reluctant to lend for the long time period that elapses between commodities sales being agreed and goods being paid for.
Sugar and alcohol. In the midst of a 30 billion dollar expansion plan, Brazil's sugar industry is facing a severe crisis:
•Loans made to some 300 companies to finance expansion projects fall due in the next 12 months. While state banks may refinance debts, private banks are reluctant to do so.
•A record amount of the sugar crop is now used to produce alcohol for fuel. However, with credit restricted, new car sales will fall by up to 20% next year, slowing growth in domestic demand for alcohol. Moreover, exports of alcohol may remain static or fall next year, mainly due to the cutback in usage in the United States, the leading market.
Hedging headaches. Brazil's leading poultry producer and exporter, Sadia, has reported losses of about 400 million dollars in unwise hedging and currency speculation, exposing it to large penalties. Sadia, together with Brazil's largest pulp producer and exporter, Aracruz, and a large steel mill, has proposed to challenge contracts that oblige it to pay heavy penalties, although the steel company has admitted that its profits from hedging have far exceeded its losses thus far. It is not yet known whether other large agribusiness companies, including sugar mills, have also suffered large losses due to poor hedging decisions.
Meat matters. The chicken, beef and pork industries should have a record year in 2008. However, this situation will clearly not be repeated in 2009:
•Industry leaders have urged chicken producers to cut back production sharply, in an attempt to avoid large surpluses early next year that would push prices down further.
•Several large beef packers that bought processors in Latin America, the United States, Europe and Australia in the past two years, may have overstretched themselves financially and encounter serious difficulties. Three such companies went public in 2007 and raised large sums on the stock markets. Although their share prices have now collapsed, they received large loans from the National Development Bank.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said maintaining the relatively high growth rate of the past few years is a "matter of honor" and has promised to aid companies in agribusiness, including those which made hedging operations which turned sour. It is not clear that this will prove feasible.

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A Place in the Auvergne Recommends Goodness Gracious Acres (Florida, USA; 1.5 acres; goats, Nubians, turkeys, chickens)

As a blogger of my own on Farm Blogs from Around the World (even if my own rural blog is a bit different - check it out) I'd like to recommend Goodness Gracious Acres, A.K.A jojosfarmlife.blogspot.com in West Palm Beach, Florida.

"Well sort of.. Closer to Lake Okeechobee than Donald Trump", Jojo laughs.

What I like about Goodness Gracious Acres is that it is one of best mergers between someone's non-farming professional life and their mini-farming experiences that I've come accross. Jojo is a graphic designer outside and inside her 1.5 acre "ranchette" as she terms it, although, she writes with a smile, that it seems much bigger to her.

Goodness Gracious Acres is a wonderfully ecclectic mix of material from the intersection of her professional, personal and rural life. Writing myself as someone who is an author, but who used to work in marketing, design and communications (and still reluctantly dabbles, now and again, to pay the bills) Goodness Gracious Acres also had a particular appeal to me personally.

Many of the bloggers on Farm Blogs from Around the World are not full-time farmers, that's a reality, and I would recommend anyone who wants to attempt this type of 'mixed-blog' to check it out.

Naturally, with Jojo being a graphic designer, the design values are high, and it's a little self-promoting of that side of her life - but tell me a farm blog that isn't, in some way, a little self-promoting, from produce & products to farmers markets to B&B and to bloggers 'day jobs', so I won't hold that against her!

She's the first to admit that it's not "a real big farm" but she still likes to live as rurally as possible. Jojo makes cheese and soap from her dairy goats, sells the milk and breeds and raises Nubians, turkeys and chickens.

Goodness Gracious Acres has been active for about 3 years and this is how Jojo describes it and herself:

"Animals. Animals. Animals. City girl gone slightly country. Totally, left of center. Living the simple life, on my own. With a little ranting thrown in to keep the balance. I live on a small "ranchette" with over 30 animals makes for some interesting stories. And in between mucking the stalls and milking goats I support my habit of rural living, by being a creative director, designer, art director, hack, type slave, layout artist, communicator. I blurr the lines between work and play all the time. Why wasn't it always this way?"

That's me too, and I couldn't agree more.

Some days she writes about design and artistic endeavors, some days it’s about bucks in rut.

"I’m not bipolar," Jojo wrote to me, "but my blog is".

Check it out.

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meat, fish, poultry, eggs, milk and nutritional yeast and B12 (IHT)

Studies hint at protective role of vitamin B12 (IHT)
By Jane E. Brody
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
It has long been known that vitamins must be obtained from sources outside the body - food and drink, and for vitamin D, exposure to sunlight - and that failing to get enough of a vitamin can result in well-defined and sometimes deadly diseases.
But in recent decades, epidemiological studies have linked deficiencies of several nutrients, especially vitamins C and E, beta carotene and folic acid, to chronic ills including heart disease and cancer. That led people to take large doses in hopes of warding off dire consequences.
But when scientifically designed clinical trials were conducted, most early promises proved false. Now another vitamin, B12, is being discussed as a factor in several ailments that commonly afflict older people, including heart disease and stroke, Alzheimer's disease and dementia, frailty, depression, osteoporosis and even some cancers.
As with the other vitamins, the evidence for the role that low levels of B12 may play in these problems comes almost entirely from epidemiological studies - those that follow a population of people, in this case measuring their B12 levels to see whether there are correlations with health. For example, a continuing study of 2,576 adults in Framingham, Massachusetts, linked low blood levels of B12 to bone loss in men and women; a study of 703 women in their 70s living at home in Baltimore linked markers of B12 deficiency to frailty; and a study published this year, of 107 community-dwelling people over 60 who were followed for five years, linked low levels of B12 to shrinkage of the brain.
This latest finding has attracted much attention, given the problem of Alzheimer's and the fact that B12 protects the nervous system.
Without B12, permanent neurological damage can occur.
In many of the studies, symptoms were seen in people with B12 levels just slightly below normal. In some cases, symptoms were seen in people with B12 levels considerably above the levels that cause the best-known disease of B12 deficiency, anemia. The findings have prompted some experts to question whether blood levels of B12 now considered normal are really optimal.
The studies suggest considerable benefits from the increasing of B12 levels, especially in adults over 50. But these types of studies cannot prove cause and effect. Until placebo-controlled clinical trials are conducted, it is not known whether artificially increasing levels of B12 among people at the low end is safe and beneficial.
Still, a growing number of experts, who cite well-established explanations for drops in B12 levels, especially in older people, are urging everyone over 50 to increase their B12 intake through supplements or fortified foods. These experts believe it cannot hurt and may help to keep people hale and hearty.
Donald Jacobsen, a biochemist at the Cleveland Clinic who has studied B12 for 40 years and is a consultant for a company developing a new B12 supplement, explained that this vitamin is needed by every cell in the body.
Since it is water-soluble and only a small fraction of the amount consumed is absorbed by the body, taking large doses of it appears to be safe, Jacobsen said in an interview.
The only dietary sources are animal products and bacteria: meat, fish, poultry, eggs, milk and nutritional yeast.
Vegans, who consume no animal foods, must take a B12 supplement or eat plant foods fortified with the vitamin. But there are other health factors that lead to a need for supplementation.
The body has a complicated means of acquiring naturally occurring B12. In animal foods the vitamin enters the body attached to protein; to be absorbed, it must first be separated from protein by stomach acid. The vitamin then combines with a substance in the gut called intrinsic factor, which enables it to pass through the small intestine into the bloodstream.
People with low levels of stomach acid or who lack intrinsic factor are at risk of developing a B12 deficiency. Among them are many millions of older people who develop atrophic gastritis, a loss of acid-producing stomach cells, and those who chronically take acid-lowering drugs like Prilosec, Prevacid and Zantac to control reflux. Because the body has a temporary storage system for B12 in the liver, a deficiency may not show up for several years after acid levels fall.
Others who are at serious risk of a B12 deficiency are those who lose major parts of their stomachs or parts of their small intestine, through, for example, surgery for weight loss or ulcers. They must take daily B12 supplements to stay healthy.
But more often it is the elderly - as many as 30 percent over age 65 - who are found to have B12 levels that are less than ideal.
"It's a huge problem," Dr. J. David Spence, a neurologist and stroke specialist at the Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario, said in an interview.
"Close to 80 percent of older adults with a B12 deficiency don't know it," he said. "Neither do their doctors. Doctors tend to think 'normal' means adequate."
Spence said that the low end of normal for B12 - commonly 160 to 250 picomoles per liter of blood serum - was hardly optimal.
That level, he said, could result in a host of chronic ailments, including cardiovascular disorders and damage to the nervous system, which becomes permanent if not caught and treated early. Spence, among others, considers 350 picomoles to be adequate.
Although it was proved long ago that people who lack enough intrinsic factor to absorb B12 can benefit from oral doses of the nutrient, most physicians were taught, and many still think, that it has to be given by injection as often as weekly to prevent life-threatening pernicious anemia.
Dr. Godfrey Oakley, a research epidemiologist at Emory University in Atlanta, said pernicious anemia could be cured with oral doses - 1,000 micrograms of B12 a day. For most people 50 and older who still have intrinsic factor but perhaps not enough stomach acid to benefit fully from B12 in animal foods, a daily intake of five or six micrograms of synthetic B12 from a supplement or fortified foods, like breakfast cereals with added B12, can correct the deficit, he said in an interview.
Oakley is a staunch advocate of adding B12 to flour, as is now done with another B vitamin, folate. "If B12 were required in flour, the problem of low stomach acid would essentially disappear," he said. "These people are not particularly sick but may be at increased risk of developing dementia, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease."
But another longtime researcher in the field, Dr. Ralph Carmel, a hematologist and director of research at New York-Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, cautions against such recommendations. "The associations found in the studies are potentially important, but no one has yet shown that if you give B12 it will make a difference down the road," he said. "We need clinical trials."

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Bluebird Meadow Farms (NY; 35 acres; poultry, vegetables, berries)

"Welcome to Bluebird Meadow Farms - a taste of our country life and journey towards the dream of sustainability on our farm."

Thanks to Andy for writing to me with some more info about his farm and blog, Bluebird Meadow Farms in Upstate NY, U.S.A. outside of Rochester. Some good practical stuff on this blog which I learnt from, especially regarding chicken processing. (The picture below is the set up for big day for the chickens.)

"We have 35 acres, a house and a barn. Currently our work with livestock is limited to the seasonal production of broiler chickens (this first year was experimental - next year we are selling a bunch) - we will also likely be adding just a few layer chickens next year for primaraly personal production.

We farm about an acre - have all anual crops you would expect - plus we are starting on blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, asparagaus, rhubarb and other perannual crops as they come up."

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A Vermont Family's Farm - Bosky Dell Farm (VT; 22 acres; Dairy, pigs, poultry, vegetables, honey)

I was put on to Bosky Dell Farm by Mary Barrosse Schwartz, of the Schwartz family whose farm it is. It's an inspirational blog and what I particularly like about it is the co-operative nature of what they are doing, which is very much how my family manages and produces our food here in the Auvergne.

(Only yesterday, for example, I was helping to finish a pigsty for 4 piglets that 5 five families are going to share, buying them in at 30kg and fattening to about 100kg on 'petit lait' and cereal from the dairy/cheese making farm owned by three of the families involved. I'm also going to be doing the milking one morning a week, in return for cheese and fresh milk.)

Bosky Dell Farm House

Mary was kind enough to write, and I'll let her do the talking:

"We decided as a family that even though we had our demanding day jobs, and even though food is plentiful in the local grocery stores, we’d grow our own food, mainly in response to higher prices for lower quality foods. When we tasted the honey from our own hive, we swore we never tasted honey as delicious and fine. Our pork was the best pork ever. Our milk, a creamy ambrosia, each glass a spiritual experience. Potatoes from our dirt tasted like potatoes my grandpa raised – carrots snappier and sweeter – and the corn could be eaten raw because it was so fresh and tender.

We have 22 acres of land behind our home, set in an upscale Vermont village. We treat our neighbors to the milk and eggs, meat and veggies we raise as a way of saying thank you for putting up with the lowing of a mother separated from her just weaned calf, or the smell of manure when we are moving the composting piles around.

We also work with a group of friends that we gradually seduced with home grown roasted chickens and many bottles of wine around our kitchen table to grow a large root cellar garden on another family’s land. We grow pork and chickens with the collective too, and buy produce in bulk from a supplier in the winter. It is a true co-op. We help each other in all ways that have to do with growing food.

We have miniature Irish Dexter cows, which we milk to drink and to make cheeses, and they are sometimes slaughtered for meat. We have laying hens, bee hives, and occasionally piglets running around. We make our own maple syrup by standing around outside in the freezing cold in late winter over a steaming pot of sweet maple sap. It is well worth tapping and hauling the sap, to taste that rich maple flavor.

We preserve much of our own food by canning, freezing and root cellaring. We even preserve the hides from the cows.

Our website discusses the recipes, shows the processes, and features our clan of teenagers and barnyard animals in photos of the garden, farm, and home. We’re learning to do much of what is going into our homestead as we move along – so we have our ups and downs, like all farmers. We share both. One friend said that one month this year was a daily saga akin to the tale of Job. I had forgotten that we had a tough month because you can’t dwell in the past when the cows need to be milked.

I hope people learn from what we learned and share.

I hope more people see and understand that if the Schwartzes in East Dorset, VT can do it, they certainly can raise their own good food too."









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Nightlife: Chronicles of Less Urban Living (Idaho; 5 acres; small-scale organic farming)

I recently recommended NightLife: Chronicles of Less Urban Living and I have had an email from Tamara with a bit more info.

Yukon Golds

Tamara and her partner have 8 horses (7 are part of a restoration project for the rare Barb horse), 2 sheep (Suffolk/Rambouillet) and 15 chickens (Black Australorps, Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, Aracaunas, and a White Crested Polish).

They're part-time, small-scale organic farmers with real jobs in 'The Shop' (what I call anywhere outside the countryside). They have a five acre holding in Idaho, U.S.A.

As for crops they produce entirely organically raised, heirloom varieties: Summer and winter squash, tomatoes, melons, peas, beans, corn, potatoes, raspberries, chichiquilite huckleberry, rhubarb, culinary herbs, and miscellaneous other vegetables in smaller quantities.

The blog isn't all about recipes, by any means, but it has some great ones, and I do like bloggers who make the connection between the produce they grow and the food they prepare.

Stuffed dates and almonds skewers

Zucchini Egg Salad

ALL PHOTOS BY KIND PERMISSION OF NIGHTLIFE 2008

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Smallest Smallholding (England)

The SmallestSmallholding is a blog from England, and the project of Lucy and her partner Rich together with our flock of 4 rescued ex-battery hens and resident cats.

The ‘Smallholding’ is a patch of land adjacent to the original garden, sited on an old unusable building site (lack of access meant that there could be no more building) that was bought up over 10 years ago by Lucy's parents. Like their garden, it too had the remnants of an old orchard, so it was turfed over and left as a large garden extension, fruit trees intact.

Lucy's blog was, like most of the blogs on Farm Blogs From Around the World, recommended to me, and she was kind enough to write to me.







"I shouldn't be surprised," Lucy wrote to me "when people message me and refer to my 'smallholding' - after all, my blog is called The Smallest Smallholding. But really, it's just a larger than average suburbanite garden with a sprinkling of fruit trees (the remnants of the market garden that stood there before our house was built circa 1919), ex-battery hens, naughty rabbits and lazy cats. "





"I fell in love with gardening and vegetable growing about three years ago. It was a gradual realisation and connection that had mostly come about through my frustration with supermarkets. I wanted clean, hearty produce. I was interested in food metres and not food miles. I wanted more control over what I put into my body, and the only way I felt I could really do that was to grow my own. It also helped that I am an avid fan of baking and cooking - the thought of producing a meal that was entirely my own produce was an attractive prospect."






"My partner Rich and I currently live in the house that I grew up in.

When it was just me, my parents and my sister, Mum and Dad bought an extra bit of land that had been lying vacant next to the long, thin garden. It had fallen into the hands of the Treasury, as it was once intended for building land, but a lack of access from the road meant that no planning permission could be granted. It was like a small secret island of brambles and bindweed. I didn't even realise that there were fruit trees in there until it was turfed over a decade ago."





"When my parents and sister moved out, Rich and I moved back in as I was studying at uni and needed somewhere to live. I didn't pay much attention to the garden, but over time began tinkering with the idea of growing vegetables after my cousin and I resurrected my late grandfather's vegetable plots. I looked at the space Rich and I had and thought it was madness. I had this land and I wasn't using it properly.

So I started digging in earnest and a few months later had removed what seemed like a tonne of builder's rubble (left over from the build that was part of the original larger plot). It had obviously been used as a dumping ground, which made my life quite difficult. But I persevered and started with two small veg plots that yielded some successes in their first year. I was hooked.

Each year I'm turning over more and more space to my veg-growing exploits."

"I'd also wanted to keep chickens for a while. Just before Christmas 2006 we rehomed 4 ex-battery hens, and it was then that I decided to create The Smallest Smallholding. This was my chance to make a stab at the Good Life. I'd idealised about it for so long, and suddenly I had the chance to make it work in my larger-than-average back garden in a semi-rural commuter town.

I wanted to be able to reach out to people, to prove that no matter what age, what income you're on, how much space or time you've got, you can do it.

I'm 25 and initially struggled to find peers that are interested in my sort of lifestyle, but through my blog have found that I'm far from alone. For a long time I'd lingered on sites like Facebook and hankered a bit after the life that my old school friends had - seemingly endless parties, cute little central London flats, jobs in PR and media in The City, fabulous dresses and countless holidays abroad. I had been destined for Oxford Uni and beyond - I'd chosen a different route and wondered if I'd made a mistake.

But looking at it now, I realise this is me. I still like sparkly dresses, but I love getting into my wellies and rummaging around in my veg plots. I love growing flowers that I know the bees and butterflies will take full advantage of. I adore stuffing my face with a big hearty soup made from my own home-grown ingredients. Watching my ex-batts enjoy their new life has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I don't feel like I'm missing out anymore, I'm feeling more complete."

"So I suppose at the moment, with a few veg plots, a small flock of hens and a lot of plans, the Smallest Smallholding is more of an ongoing, growing project that is more of an ethos than a fully-functional micro farm at the moment.

But I'm trying to swing the balance so that all my plans come into fruition eventually.

I'm a vegetarian and Rich eats meat less often than he used to (and always of the highest welfare standard), so I don't think we'll ever raise anything for the table. He says he gets more enjoyment from watching our hens flourish from the listless robots they were than he would eating a few meals of chicken.

But there's definitely lots of plans afoot to become more self-sufficient with each month and year that passes.

My blog is a way to share the journey and experience with others."

"What's the plan for the future then?

More vegetable plots and fruit bushes, ploughing onwards and upwards on this learning curve by experimenting with home-made produce - making my own jams, preserves, cheeses and bread just to start with.

Learning how to properly store veg, grappling with planting successively and less reliance on supermarkets for food are also on the list.

Perhaps planting a tiny coppice so we can provide our own winter fuel.

The possibilities are endless, it's just a case of find a way to fit it all in and manage it properly.

I'm also a keen wildlife enthusiast, so finding ways to let nature flourish and The Smallest Smallholding to regulate and take care of itself is another aim.

Sometimes it's a joy and sometimes it's nothing but boring, hard work. But ultimately, it's a journey that I've started and will continue on, and one that I'm sure I will reap the rewards from."

Thanks Lucy for a great introduction to you and your blog. I was particularly struck by her initial struggle to find peers following the same life style as her (she is 25, and has taken the road less travelled) but her blog, and I hope this blog, will help her and others to make connections with hundreds of thousands of people in the developed world who are interested in where their food comes from and producing much of it themselves.






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Plowing, Sowing and an Occasional Harvest

I received, after a small tech hitch, a wonderful email from Matt, a recommended blogger at Plowing, Sowing and an Occasional Harvest.



It's interesting to note how many farm bloggers in the United States are committed Christians. I'm not - never say never - so I think it's best if I let Matt do the talking.


"I guess the name of my blog is a little deceptive. When I started blogging , I was at a turning point in my life. Though our family has been involved in farming for generations, the name of my blog does not coincide with anything that we produce.





We produce cattle and chickens along with the hay to feed the cows. There are around 250 head of crossbred cows and we have 18 chicken houses.

There are 20,000 birds per house and this happens 5 ½ times per year on the average. That makes 1,980,000 chickens per year that is produced. These are the chickens that people buy in the local grocery store. To put this into perspective, at 5.5 lbs per bird, we produce 10,890,000 pounds of meat per year. A cattle operation would have to have to raise and sell 16,754 calves per year weighing 650 pounds in order to match the amount of meat that we produce.

I also raise and train Catahoula Cur cow dogs."






"As you can see, Plowing, Sowing and an Occasional Harvest doesn’t line up with meat production.

But here is what does line up.

My wife, of eighteen years and I, have four children. We have the God given responsibility of raising our four children under the authority of our Heavenly Father."

"There are so many times in our lives that we “plow” and “sow” and we never get to see the fruit of our labor. We get tired, beat up, run down, sad, mad, kicked to the curb, rejected, but as a Christian, we can work through the hard times with the Hope that is shown to us in the Holy Bible, knowing that we will come out on the other side victorious, high and lifted up, encouraged, free, loved, cherished and complete."

"In my little world, in Central Texas, I can only live to glorify my Savior, Jesus Christ.

It is hard at times, but when I look at the responsibility of raising my children it is worth it.

So as you can see, Plowing, Sowing and an Occasional Harvest doesn’t exactly line up with what we do on the farm.

The analogy is what I was after."

Matt Nichols

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Investors plow money into Russian farming, but problems remain

DOBRINKA, Russia: When Murat Shamshinurov toasted this year's harvest with a glass of vodka, he did so with confidence.
A fleet of new Dutch combine harvesters, better seeds and a mild winter promise a bumper crop at the farms he runs in Russia's fertile black-earth region. This prosperity is the result of a $175 million investment by Nastyusha, the grain-trading company that bought the land in 2006.
Shamshinurov's situation is not unique. Investors are plowing money into Russia's open lands to resuscitate the long-neglected farm sector and supply a world in ever greater need of food. The Russian wheat crop this year promises to be the best in 30 years.
"The opportunity for agriculture in Russia is remarkable," said Sid Bardwell, general manager in Russia for Deere, the U.S. agricultural equipment supplier. "It has the potential to be one of the truly key sectors of the economy."
Russian agriculture, crippled by the legacy of Josef Stalin's collectivization, is one of four sectors given priority status by the Kremlin as it seeks to reverse more than a decade of decline after the Soviet Union's collapse.
Russia, the world's fifth-largest grain grower and exporter, expects a grain crop of at least 85 million tons this year, up 4 percent from 2007.
Agriculture contributed 5 percent of Russia's gross domestic product in 2007. But Russia has yet to surpass Soviet-era production levels on a sustained basis.
Only 13 percent of Russian land is used for agriculture, compared with a world average of 38 percent. A hectare of wheat, or about 2.5 acres, yields an average of 1.9 tons - much less than the U.S. average of 2.8 tons and 5.5 tons in the European Union.
"Agriculture, even with the current low level of efficiency, is still a profitable business thanks to government support," Natalya Zagvozdina, an analyst at Renaissance Capital, said. "Imagine what it would be like if efficiencies increase."
Prices for wheat, rice and corn hit records this year as droughts in grain-growing countries exacerbated a shortage at a time of high global demand. This makes Russian agriculture even more attractive as production costs are relatively low.
Still, farming accounts for about 10.5 percent of the country's work force, compared with 2.5 percent in the United States.Fertilizer and fuel costs are rising worldwide, and investment is needed in equipment and better seeds to increase yields and offer insurance against Russia's cold winters.
Investor appetite for the sector, coupled with the need for cash to develop land, will add to the $420 million in new capital raised by Russian agribusiness companies since November.Zagvozdina said Russian farm companies were likely to raise a further $500 million to $1.5 billion by the end of the year, either through initial public offerings or private placements.Foreign investors want first to buy land in Russia.
"Russia was the bread basket of Europe 100 years ago," said Sergei Glaser, a manager at Vostok Nafta Investment. "The quality of land is exceptional, but the neglect of this land during communist times was astounding."
Rural life got even harder after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Land lay fallow and machinery was left to rust.Glaser's fund, with $1 billion in assets under management in the former Soviet Union, owns a quarter of Black Earth Farming, a company listed in Sweden that is named after the fertile belt of soil.
About $3.3 billion from this year's federal budget was committed to the sector, and the same amount was supplied by regional governments, said Dmitry Rylko, general director of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies in Moscow.T
hat money, plus the rising private investment, is financing a move by large agribusiness companies - whose assets include land, grain elevators, flour mills and port terminals - to establish themselves as reliable, long-term suppliers to global markets.
"Russia has come to the front line of grain exporters," said Yuri Makarov, senior economist at the International Grains Council, based in London, which forecasts that Russia could account for 11 percent of world wheat exports in the 2008-09 season.
There is also a second thrust to investment in Russian farming: the development of a livestock sector reared on homegrown crops to cut dependence on imported food products.
Despite having an exportable surplus of grains, Russia still imports more than a third of its poultry and a quarter of its beef. It spent $4.5 billion on meat and poultry imports last year.
Nastyusha's strategy in the Lipetsk region of central Russia follows this model of using high-quality wheat to produce flour and bread, while also rearing cattle and producing its own milk. Originally a trading company, it has united 29 former collective farms in Lipetsk over the past two years as the basis for an integrated farming operation.
"It's essential for the development of the agricultural sector," Shamshinurov, who runs Nastyusha's 130,000 hectares in Lipetsk, said as he stood in fields of golden wheat that will be processed at the company's flour mills in Moscow.
The authorities in Lipetsk, 450 kilometers, or 280 miles, southeast of Moscow, describe their region as the "Pearl of the Black Earth." Yields at Nastyusha's farms are expected almost to double to 6 tons per hectare this year.
Similar results can be seen elsewhere.
"Learning to apply Western technology in a Russian environment has led to better crops," said Richard Willows, a former grain trader who left England six years ago to run Heartland Farms in the Penza region at the invitation of the governor.
The government's push to make agriculture a priority has not been an unqualified success, however. The area of 47.2 million hectares planted with grain in 2008 is 25 percent below the area of 1990, and the number of cattle has stagnated, rather than increased.Sergei Mikhailov, chief executive of a meat producer, the Cherkizovo Group, said Russian meat consumption had declined to 51 kilograms, or about 112 pounds, a person a year from the Soviet-era level of 78 kilograms.
Private investment is again playing a large role. Cherkizovo is the first Russian meat producer to be listed on the London Stock Exchange and is investing $350 million this year, after the same amount last year, to develop its pork and poultry business.
"The share of imported pork and poultry will go down in future thanks to growing domestic production," Mikhailov said, "but the share of imported beef could even grow because of the lack of high-quality beef production facilities in Russia."
President Dmitri Medvedev stressed Russia's potential in addressing the global food crisis when he met fellow Group of 8 leaders in Japan last month.
"Our country's long-term input in solving this problem will mainly consist of significantly increasing our agricultural production and supplies, not only to the local market but also to world markets," he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/06/business/farm.php