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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   40081 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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Once, there was an initiative to stimulate economic activity and improve the real estate situation etc. with granting people large plots of land. By the time it was approved, it was downscaled to no more than 1 hectare (0.01 sq. km) per applicant on the Far East (area ≈7 million, pop. ≈8 million and falling), located at least 10 km away from towns over 50k and 20 km away from towns of 300+k, so effectively in wild boreal forest, in groups no more than 10 people (so, you are capped at 0.1 km^2 for your project), and with certain onerous rules of use (to begin with, you have to prove you're developing it over the first 5 years, lest it be taken away, and making it your actual property is not straightforward).

In comparison, Canada gave out 160 acres (65 ha) of land per household via its Dominion Lands Act, out of which you had to cultivate a quarter and build a permanent dwelling on it in three years. That's sixteen times more land if you use a replacement-level family of four as your benchmark. And you could double your homestead after you improved your original plot enough, giving you 320 acres (130 ha). They also had an exclusion zone around railways, but realized it made the program much less attractive and got rid of it.

4401,2 thousand ha of farmland lay fallow in Russia in 2020. That's 27 507 Canadian-style plots they could have given away, about half of them in praire-like conditions of Siberia. What's worse, there was 36256,3 ha of farmland that was technically not fallow but wasn't worked by its owners. I could buy 3200 ha of farmland in Hakassija for the price of a gaming PC if I wanted, why would I ever be interested in a single hectare in the middle of nowhere?

I could buy 3200 ha of farmland in Hakassija for the price of a gaming PC if I wanted

What's the catch ? Climate's not good for farming there ?

It's not that bad, kinda like Winnipeg in Canada. But it's not the best place for farming: it's remote, so you'll spend a lot of transportation costs. Given that you'll have to buy or lease a lot of farming machinery either way, buying farmland in a warmer and more central place might be better in the long run. Except a lot of farming is now mostly done by longitudinally integrated farming companies, it's hard to compete with their efficiency.

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