By Alternative World News Network
The Russian government has made an interesting decision to give away free land to anyone willing to farm it.
In Russia’s Far-East Federal District, that ranges all the way to the Pacific Ocean, areas of land, 2.5 acres in size, will be given to any Russian citizen that wants to work it.
“It will allow Russians, especially the youth, to discover in the Far East a real chance for self-realization,” said Aleksandr Galushka, the minister for Far East development.
The plan states that if the citizen working the land can show that they are building it up, specifically agriculturally, it’s all theirs after five years.
Russia’s Far East is home to about 2 people per square mile. The area has lost about two million people since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and is currently home to about 4% of Russia’s population. Even with these numbers, the land mass still takes up nearly 1/3 of the country.
This program is similar to the Russian resettlement program, near the end of the Russian Empire, which brought some 3 million people to the region, though at the time 70% of the population was agrarian. Today, most everyone is an urbanite. Getting people out of the cities and onto the farms may prove challenging, but free land is free land.
“It’s a way of trying to overcome the problem that it’s extremely expensive to get people to move there, to live there, and to carry out economic activity there,” said Richard Connolly, co-director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Now, there are only a few municipalities that can be acquired to farm. Come February, 2017, every piece of available land in the Far East is up for grabs.
Image Credit – Lidia Kelly – Reuters
I am from Panama. I wished this opportunity be open for someone like me, that i am poor, and my goverment will no give me a chance to farm like this. I hope russians take the chance. I will take a plane if Russia give me a piece of land to work with.
nathaliel Robinson, please surf our blog: wikiparedon.blogspot.com i from Colombia
2.5 acres is not enough land to farm and make a living at in todays world. today it take at least 100 acres to show a profiit.
Money and profit is great but not the real crux of living on this beautiful planet. You die and cannot take the money with you.But LIVING on the land is very different.
This is true. However its not about making money or making the land economically viable. Its about moving urbanites out of cities that do not have enough employment, about feeding ones family (“If they can prove they’ve done something with it after five years, primarily by agricultural means, it’s all theirs.”). Something with it.. to me is that it is in better shape than it was when they started.
Good on the Russians for being innovative and unselfish.
Good luck to all those who take up this offer
I wish to go to Russia and plant delicious vegetables and fruits……
I will do this till the day I die…..
What can this government offer.?
Ariel,i would Go with You ??
Yeah but they said turn a profit and all land available is up for grabs, dude, why not a 100 acres? Small cow ranch, a lot is possible. Here in America we’re still technically able to lay claim to a hundred acres of land as long as we can show improvement on the property, however the federal government has been illegally snagging states land and in many cases cattle rustling from ranchers, our government is a joke now and this “election” is a joke, as long as I was left alone to do my thing I’d turn a profit off any land
2.5 Acres is certainly enough. Only large enterprises growing commercially need 100 acres. (Companies like Dole, Campbells etc) when food is used for processing in a plant. People have to start somewhere.
Good farm land here in the US will net about $130 an acre per season. A 100 acres of cropland will thus get you a net profit, in a good year, of $13,000. That’s half the poverty level. You’d be better off just going on welfare. A single family farm smaller than about 1200 acres isn’t worth doing. A farm that size can net you about $68,000 a year after depreciation and taxes. That’s a middle class income for a family of 4. It certainly isn’t anything that would attract large corporate operators.
A farm half that size in Denmark makes about $120,000 but then again fuel and absolutely everything is far more expensive along with the taxes so perhaps the buying power is similar in the end. But my Grandmother lived of about 8 acres most of her life.
your doing it wrong than you can make more than that going organic and sustainable
2.5 acre is more then sufficient to provide for a family (serveral).
And even though farming takes some time, there will be plenty of time to have business on more profitable branches.
and the food bill… well, if done correctly, you won’t have one xD
Depends on the quality of the soil, length of the growing season, available water. Certainly American industrial agriculture with sterilized soil and massive chemical purchases would not work on 2.5 acres.
However if you can take the time to rebuild your soil and the microbiome you could do a lot with 2.5 acres.
I will registered to do it,
there is a lot you can do in just 1 acre of land if you know what are you doing. is not about just making money. is about to have a piece of mind. at least for a while.
I want to do this
Anastasia! !!!!
I like du framing in Russia