Theme: Institution

UKRAINIAN VILLAGE LIFE

(village vs farm)

In America when we say ‘small farms’ we mean that a single family owns and manages it with family resources. This style farm accounts for 90% of US farms, but only 40% of output. Or conversely, 10% of US farms are commercial enterprises which produce 60% of the output. (I do not know the acreage behind each of the percentages.)

Ukraine is a breadbasket and has some of the world’s largest farms. The Ukrainian Government owns 80% of the farm land, and generates revenue from it (much of which appears to be stolen through corruption if the news I read is correct.)

That leaves 20% of the farm land for private use. The average small farm here in Ukraine is about 2500 acres, and they sell produce – cattle are unprofitable.

But when they say ‘the village’ they generally refer to:

—“Most families have a one acre plot on which they keep a cow and grow vegetables and fruit trees to feed the family, and even those that can afford to buy everything from supermarkets tend to grow their own.”—

Today I’m standing outside 2700 square foot two story farm house built of large concrete or maybe aero-crete blocks, sheathed in dense insulation foam, covered with poly wire, and with stucco applied. It has a tile roof.

At the other end of the lot there is a ‘summer kitchen’ (for cooking and processing produce), under construction and it’s built with aero-crete to the lintels and then bricks above – overhead are oversized wood beams.

It looks like at most two acres at least one half or more of which is what they call a ‘garden’ but what we could nearly call a small field. The half of the property gardened has a mild incline and at the top looks like a septic mound, then next is an orchard, with new young tress, and the rest is broken into sections for different kinds of produce. I see a pile of new potatoes that looks to have been discarded or set aside for seed. Behind the summer kitchen is a long trench that looks like its used for composting.

Now, if folks can afford to shop at the market, they still don’t. They like ‘organic’ foods here. They live off their produce and usually sell some of it (I have no idea how that occurs). And when they retire they own their homes, must pay for gas and electricity, and can largely feed themselves. And this is considered ‘a quality life’. Typically the younger generation lives in cities and goes to the ‘village’ to see relatives and celebrate holidays (which in Ukraine seem to be every three or four days.)

Houses range from frighteningly decrepit shacks on small plots to 5K square foot homes with regal fences – although I have seen none that equal Upper Middle class American homes in the best neighborhoods. Most of these homes are paid for in cash. They spend a year or two building them. Almost every man you meet seems to know how to build a house with the same familiarity we think of changing a car’s oil.

This part of the world can tolerate economic volatility because it is still possible for much of the population to return to the village and rely upon personal production in a pinch. The poor here may be poor but they rarely look underfed. Just the opposite: too many potatoes.

What I notice most is that people here are not alone. Friends and family have meaning in that they materially care for one another. Because they can. Because they remain in proximity to one another. Because they are not dependent on a complex and fragile system of production for survival – only for entertainment.

Despite my love of my family, and my respect for the absolute nuclear family, I understand that the mobile society is a bad thing.

And worse, that economists are complicit in the destruction of western civilization.

I didn’t think I could put morality back into the science of economics but I did. And it wasn’t very hard. What will be hard is legislating morality in economics, and prosecuting immoral economists the way we prosecute immoral scientists.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine