COMMUNISMS
COMMUNISMS
LEGACY IS FAR
FROM GONE
The Iron Curtain may have
been torn down, but in
Belarus the legacy of
communism lives on.
That was the clear
conclusion reached by
Writtle College lecturers
Mike Lee and
Henry Matthews when
they visited the
Belarussian Agricultural
Academy as part of a
British Council-funded
REAP spray application
training project
BELARUS was one of the last of the former Soviet countries to fully embrace democracy and accept more liberal attitudes to society and the economy. You only have to look at the agricultural sector to see that.
Large state farms are still at the centre of rural communities, providing everything for their members including health care, housing and education. The farms are large by western standards, ranging from 3000-8000ha (7400-20,000 acres) with labour forces of up to 400 people.
The main enterprises on these farms are wheat, rye and barley together with dairy cows and beef. But potatoes, various fodder crops, geese, horses and Arctic fox (bred for their skins) are also important.
Most cereal farms expect a wheat yield of 4t/ha (1.6t/acre) for both winter and spring crops. Under the Soviet system, the order to apply a spray often came from a central agency. More recently, the scarcity of pesticides has meant that if a farm is fortunate enough to be able to afford a chemical, then it is applied whether it has any economic benefit or not.
The main problem for the state farms is that they have to sell a fixed amount of their output to the state at a low set price. Anything they produce over and above this can be sold on the open market. The low set prices mean that theres not enough money available to spend on the necessary inputs. That was compounded in 1999 by a very dry spring and summer which reduced yields by up to 1t/ha.
Each of the farms employs agronomists who have a high level of knowledge of their crops and specialties. Most are aware of new fungicides like strobilurins available to UK farmers but they cannot afford to buy them. As a result, farmers are limited to choosing first generation products such as Tilt and Impact.
The economic significance of applying a flag-leaf fungicide was widely appreciated but this was often the only disease control employed and some crops did not even get that. Ironically, one of the biggest problems for cereal growers is ergot. This cannot be controlled with chemicals and the large quantities of grass in the crops and the field margins are ideal for the development of the disease
Main weed threat
The main weed threat to the cereal crops comes from couch grass and some broad-leaved weeds such as mayweed. A certain amount of glyphosate is used to control the couch and a broad-leaved herbicide is used in the spring with an unspecified active ingredient. Insect pests are not a problem as the cold winters eradicate those familiar to the British farmer.
Potatoes are an important crop because they form an integral part of the Belarussian diet. But while many farms grow them, as much as 60% of the total output is grown on the private plots that most families maintain. In fact, more than 30% of all agricultural production comes from these plots.
Discussions on potato crop protection centre around the threat from Colorado Beetle and blight. Again, the cost of chemicals means blight treatments are infrequent and often involve chemicals that have been superseded in Britain.
The Belarussian Agricultural Academy is one of the oldest agricultural teaching institutions in Europe and boasts among its old boys the countrys current president and prime minister. The academy has a good reputation for academic learning and achievement, particularly in the knowledge of pests and diseases and in the chemistry of crop protection.
The purpose of our visit was to explain how the skills and information involved with crop-spraying are passed on in Britain and how this could be improved in Belarussia. The aim was to ensure that hard-to-afford sprays are applied in the most effective way.
We talked to students and staff in formal and informal settings about concepts like gross margins and thresholds. But these concepts are not familiar to Belarussian agriculturists who believe that, with all these inputs available, UK agriculture must in the words of the translator "be covered with honey".
Studied courses
While students studied courses called integrated crop management, there was little to suggest that their understanding of the term was the same as in Britain. The general principle seemed to be that if the spray is in the store it will be used.
We tried to impress on the Belarussian students that rotation, varietal choice and other husbandry techniques were an important part of ICM. Our hope is that Belarussian agriculture can move towards adoption of the ICM model using natural means, sensitive husbandry and targeted inputs to develop a profitable sustainable agriculture.
Above and right: Belarussian Agricultural Academy at Gorki is one of the oldest agricultural teaching institutions
in Europe.
Above: Pictures
of machines developed at the
academy surround Lenin. Left: Henry Matthews (far left) and Mike Lee (far right) with their opposite numbers from the academys crop protection faculty.