Confessions of an Altai farmer

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On the next anniversary of the introduction of "anti-sanctions", the government reports on the growth of agriculture. Officials and state-owned media never tire of talking about how Russian farmers have benefited from the conflict with the West. In reality, not everyone is delighted with what is happening.

In the southeast of the Altai Territory, I raise animals for meat. We have a hilly forest-steppe there, full of flies and horseflies in summer. I often take the slaughtered cattle to the north-east of Gorny Altai, to the taiga region. To get the meat there, you have to travel a long way on gravel roads; a foreign car here will quickly go to waste - I prefer domestic cars, although they are gluttonous for gasoline. While I am driving through the Turochak region <the region of the multinational republic of Gorny Altai, inhabited mainly by Russians> - along the highway, if you can call it that, and to the regional center, poverty and decline are continuous. In small endangered villages, the locals, if they take meat from me, then little by little. So, someone will buy a couple of kilograms. I can count such people on my fingers. All meat in the regional centers actually goes, where there is some kind of wealth.

Today I have a pig carcass in the trunk of my car. I left the house at five in the morning, while it was still cool outside. During the day here, in the taiga, it will be hot. For a month, as a farmer, I earn about 30-40 thousand rubles. It turns out not more than this amount, if you subtract gasoline, vehicle repairs, storing feed for the winter and numerous business expenses. But this in our Altai Territory is considered good money, many in the countryside have only 10-15 thousand a month. For Muscovites, this is not money at all! I earn these rubles from morning to evening and seven days a week, and they just get it in the offices, because they suck all the juices from Siberia.

Before opening my own sole proprietor, I worked for a private trader for a long time. He worked hard, but he also called him in favor of his pocket. But he steal carefully - without fanaticism. Otherwise, you can't - either start your own business, or spend your whole life on someone else's uncle. Or go to jail if you overdo it. So they are dragging our people - either from the owner, or from the state. They pay little.

Farm - work seven days a week

In the countryside, you have to plow and plow - any day, with your own hands from an early age. We have no little hands. Even drunken drunks do not grow their hands out of their ass when necessary - they are simply too lazy to do something for themselves on a regular basis. I can do everything: I rebuilt myself a normal house, I repair cars, and not go to a car service. A village house is not an apartment, it must be constantly paid attention to - the roof should be repaired, a new fence put up when necessary. Firewood will not go into the stove on their own - they brought a tree and drank, chop it, put it in a pile. I cut cattle. I don't have time to lie in bed in the morning and stay late in the kitchen in the evening. Look at my hands - see how callous they are? Have you seen the same in Moscow often?

The farm brings the main income in the summer. Altai Territory has very hot, but short summers and frosty winters. Now, in July, we are sunbathing our daughter, but a couple of months will pass, and a long thirty-forty-degree cold will hit. In summer, the animal feeds meat and actively goes under the knife, while farmers mow and dry hay for the winter. It is easiest to keep cows on the farm - meat is more expensive, and there is a lot of grass in our area. You can't make much money on a pig - it is very cheap, and fodder is expensive.

If you donate meat to buyers who dictate prices, then you can hardly recoup your costs. The Miratorg Corporation controls many farms in the Altai Territory and Gorny (Altai Republic). To get at least some ruble, I have to keep cattle and trade in meat at the same time. But when I go to customers with mascara, I don’t tax, or what is your name for this thing - BlaBlaCar? I will always give a person and I will not ask for money <the author of this material hitchhiked around the region>. It is customary in Siberia to help people.

Moscow has taken everything into its own hands

When I went to work in the Kemerovo region, I used to find it ridiculous that Aman Tuleyev's "long-term governor of the region" in small villages where a couple of pensioners live out their century, lights along the highway at night. But in our area of the Altai Territory, in the dark, the roads, even in large villages, do not try to illuminate <in the 200-thousandth Biysk the federal highway M-52 remains without light in the evening>. There are many roads, and you can count the repaired ones on one hand. Even in the neighboring regions, gravel roads mainly lead. The officials appointed by Putin in Altai do not care. Vodka is eaten until reddened and stolen. Although Tuleyev has deteriorated over the years - he got drunk. In industrial Kemerovo, he is everywhere in the share - he is more concerned with taking for himself than investing in the region.

We, the Altai Territory, even in the current conditions, when many abandoned arable lands stand, feed the whole of Russia with our fields, and vegetate in poverty. Our peasant flees to Barnaul and Biysk, where wages are higher than in rural areas. A lot of people have left the region for good and continue to leave every year. There are a quarter fewer people left in my village than in the 2000s.

In one regional center, due to a lack of budget, employees are being cut - from cops and doctors to military registration and enlistment offices. There is no money, not only for developing the area, but also for civil servants. The military registration and enlistment office was recently closed. The conscripts now go to Biysk. How? Yes, at their own expense - 500 rubles for a round-trip ticket. And it takes more than two hours to get to Biysk - 100 kilometers.

Siberia is a colony for distant Moscow, in which many residents of the Altai Territory, and Siberia, have never been in their lives. And they do not plan to get there. What for? In recent years, Moscow has taken over almost everything in our region: agricultural complexes, enterprises, retail chains. Large local businesses are strangled and bankrupt with the help of officials and threats. From us to them - meat and grain in echelons. From them we in return - ridiculous salaries and huge taxes, which go straight to Moscow. And then Muscovites come to the Altai Territory and Gorny Altai and build their dachas. So much land has already been bought here! Wherever you spit, in every village there are mansions belonging to Muscovites or Petersburgers. How much money would they spend on their estates per hectare with jeeps and helicopters? In my opinion, a strong government is needed, not like Putin's, when officials and Muscovites are allowed everything. And Siberian taxes should be left in our regions.

Money for the development of Crimea will be torn away from my family

TV is a bloody zombie box. I haven't watched it for many years. The media rave about Putin, they say something about internal stability, Crimea and the global threat of numerous "enemies" for Russia. What do I care about this Crimea? I am a Siberian and I will not go to rest on its beaches, but they will take money for the development of Crimea from my pocket. Torn away from my family. And my opinion will not be asked. Why do I need a war in Donbass, because of which our roads are not being repaired, people in municipal services are being cut, and district budgets are tightening their belts. If in Donbass someone ran to rallies and shouted that he wants to be with Russia - what side am I to them? Neither I Donbass, nor they swore an oath to Russia, so that we would send our army to the front for them and allocate our budget to them.

It is high time for United Russia to leave. There will always be normal people in their place. Nothing for us - Siberians - Putin with his parasites is not doing or planning, as I see it. Our oil, gas, timber, meat and grain give subsidies to his huge city and the army of officials. The President is rebuilding Sochi, supporting Chechnya with Kadyrov, Donbass, building a bridge to Crimea and already fighting in Syria at our expense, in fact. Also Syria now! I need to raise my children, and not listen to how Russia helps the next "brothers". And if something happens to the country, then in the very first days half of these "patriots" will run away from their apartments abroad - to warm their belly under the palm trees. However, they stole from us. They already keep their main money in the West. And we - Siberians - are going to clean up the next crisis. Sick to endure all this. Angry.