When we make political and economic judgments in Yerevan, we must remember that in the Ararat valley, the storehouse of our agricultural products, which is only 30-40 kilometers away from the capital, people pay 50 drams for a bucket of water. It’s not in Sudan, where people are in need of humanitarian assistance, it takes place under our nose, and providing people with drinking and irrigation water is not a very complex and expensive budgeting issue.
The other problems are not unsolvable either. Our villagers do not need either charity or even low-interest rates, because even if loans are given in zero percent, it will not bring any benefits, with existing infrastructure, the structure of the current market, and especially the current monopolies. Agricultural producers will remain “under credits”, even if their interest rates are low, with “kolkhoz” ideas about the marketing of the 1970s and techniques coming from the same period. They will continue to work with a loss, despite the state aid of fuel and seeds. Agriculture will remain unprofitable, even in the case of donating hail-prone networks to the villagers and launching the stations with the same function to disperse the clouds every day.
The question is more radical and fundamental: does our government want us to have a middle stratum not expecting anybody’s “Charity”, whose core in Armenia, I am sure, should form a farmer living by the honest sweat of his own brow, and dignity? If it does, then the Minister of Agriculture would not say, “let them not be engaged in agriculture”, because in this case villagers are left with the alternative to go Russia to earn their living.
There is also another way: to work as a farm laborer for our “latifundism”-oligarchs owning large farms which, perhaps, will provide them with bearable living conditions, not worse than Russia. But here comes our national feature: we do not want to do such work in our homeland, whereas we agree to do more degrading work abroad.
When any rural economy is viewed by the state as a business unit that needs to be fostered, as they say, give a helping hand, not by providing with diesel fuel or seeds (which is, by the way, is of poor quality very often), but with infrastructure, marketing and, most importantly, restraining monopolies. In this case, it will be possible to talk about agricultural reforms. Otherwise, over the past 25 years, there have been improvements, but the state of people is just getting worse.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
