The essential difficulty is one of money. For instance, the old, broken down machinery desperately needs to be replaced, but the state has devoted very little of its already meager resources to farming. Again, the people hit hardest are Russia's rural inhabitants. The collective farm workers were supposed to be given shares of the kolkhoz land, but often the shares were snatched from under them by corrupt administrators before they even realized they had a right to the land. In many places, the collective farm essentially remains, but laborers do not receive their salaries for months and are often paid in clothing and food instead.
Analysts foresee the situation getting worse before it improves.
Most of them agree that what Russian agriculture requires is more reforms and stepped-up efforts to educate farmers about private agrarian enterprise. Nevertheless, possibilities for long-term agricultural growth in Russia are good. Various members of the Russian government have pushed for protectionist economic policies to support the countryside, and slogans like Boris Yeltsin s Buy Russian have at least raised public awareness about the need for such support. In addition, programs enlisting the aid of American agriculture experts have begun to forge positive changes at the local level in certain areas, perhaps pointing the way to improvement for other rural communities. In time, the proper use of Russia s vast natural and human resources could eventually revive Russian agriculture.