Feeding on Farming

Stalinist collectivized agriculture was a sort of state feudalism, designed to neutralize the peasants, control them, and squeeze out of them as much as possible. In a country where things habitually are renamed in order to pretend to be changing instead of actually doing so, the collective agricultural enterprise preserves the dominance of formerly (and sometimes still) Communist feudal lords over agricultural producers who get almost nothing for their labor except food and what they can pilfer. Obviously, the sector constantly hemorrhages state funds and benefits politically connected monopolies. It is a sad story familiar throughout the Ukrainian economy: the state determines who can make really serious money, and nobody, like foreign investors who might have a different idea how to do things, had better get in their way. As Canadian Ambassador Fraser pointed out in his interview with us some months ago, Canada has much worse conditions for agriculture and much higher productivity because farming is private, and he was, of course,  ignored.

Perhaps donor countries and organizations should try even harder to use their aid as a lever to force this country to do what is clearly in the objective interest of its own economic development, only not in the private interests of those who use power for their own parasitic ends. This applies especially, but by no means only, to agriculture.