Farewell, Our Horn of Plenty

Shortly before this harvest, statistics reported a 9% decline in the number of livestock in the country since last year. What caused such a dramatic decrease? It turns out that meat was traded for gasoline, diesel, and spare parts for machinery, for virtually bankrupt collective enterprises did not have money to pay for harvesting crops. Meat was also used to pay off the urgent debts to the state budget.

Moreover, cows in collective enterprises are dying out due to the unreasonable pricing policy. Only 20% of the total milk produced is sold since purchasing prices of milk-processing factories are three times as low as the cost price of milk. Every kilogram of milk means additional loss for a farm. "If we could only restore crop pastures," says Volodymyr Dermenets, Deputy Head of the Animal Husbandry Department of the Ministry of the Agroindustrial Complex, "We would be able to reduce the cost price of milk." So far, dairy farming has been of importance only to farms located close to urban areas.

According to specialists' forecasts, farms will continue to stand idle and degrade. Since 1990, the number of dairy cattle in Ukraine has dropped by 2.3 million head.

New farmers also do not find milk prices attractive. According to the statistics, on average such farmers have almost the same number of cows as a traditional collective enterprises.

As a result, city residents have milk and dairy products on their dinner tables more and more rarely. The total milk yield in Ukraine has dropped from 24.5 million tons in 1990 to 13.7 million tons in 1997. Tourists should not be misled by a wide variety of dairy products on the store shelves-most Ukrainians can no longer afford to buy this staple that not only farmers but also city folk used to have with almost every meal. Quite a number of city children are growing up without milk. And this is nothing but yet one more threat to our national security.