Rogachievo, Russia
September 5, 2002

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

Nina Prokhorova's face, chiseled by the weather, reflects a life of hardship. She is a dacha farmer -- a small landholder -- whose life depends on potatoes. A delegation of Cornell Univeristy professors visited her and other potato farmers in Russia last week in an effort to help them save their crops and their livelihoods.

The Cornell professors, led by K.V. Raman, executive director of the Cornell Eastern Europe Mexico (CEEM) potato late blight program, went to Russia to deliver seven different potato varieties that resist several diseases and pests. With the arrival of the aggressive strains of potato late blight in Russia in 1976, the problems for the small farmers -- who cannot afford pesticides -- have become worse. During the last 15 years the amount of late blight has doubled from 2 million tons of losses to 4 millions tons of losses, says Raman.

One of the varieties includes the Cornell-developed New York 121, which resists late blight, the disease blamed for the Irish potato famine in the 1840s. It also resists potato viruses X and Y, golden nematodes and scab.

"Because of the visit we are now able to see these farmers and understand their problems better; it was really a fact-finding mission for us," says Raman. "We need to take a more holistic, integrated approach in CEEM's next phase. By demonstrating a few pilot programs, Cornell will do a great service for Russian potato production. After all, it is their second bread."

The Cornell group, along with scientists from the Vavilov Institute of Plant Research in St. Petersburg, Moscow State University, the All-Russian Institute for Phytopathology of Moscow and the Dokagene seed company agreed to develop proposals to begin farmer field schools, extension programs and to create educational materials.

Russian farmer Nina Prokhorova digs up potatoes from her dacha garden, which has been devastated this year by drought and Colorado potato beetles. Blaine P. Friedlander Jr./Cornell News Service

The Cornell effort is aimed at farmers like Prokhorova: She lives on a tiny pension in a pine house close to the road. The small building is painted green and its ornate front windows are typical for houses in the countryside perimeter of Moscow. Wood for cooking and heating is stacked neatly in back and tree branches prop up the porch roof.

A half-acre dacha or kitchen garden lies adjacent to the house. Prokhorova has planted a few rows of beets and cabbage, but potatoes dominate the plot. There are no supermarkets or grocery stores in her village. If she wants food, she must grow it. If she wants extra money, she must sell potatoes on the roadside for about 13.6 cents a pound. Without potatoes, she will starve.

It is the middle of August and severe drought has all but stifled this year's crops. Also, Colorado potato beetles have gnawed their way through her plants that survived the drought. With the potatoes' foliage gone, she harvests the tiny tubers early.

"If you had transgenic potato seed that resisted the beetles, would you use it?" asks Allan Parker, vice president of Dokagene, a potato seed company based in Moscow. Parker is leading the tour for the Cornell delegation to show them the gravity of this agricultural crisis.

"Nyet, nyet, nyet," says Prokhorova. "I would not use the seed unless my neighbors use it. If I use it and my neighbors do not, all the beetles will stay on my garden."

Parker smiles. "She doesn't understand," he says. In fact, the opposite will happen. Using the transgenic seed, the beetles will leave her potato plants alone and continue to chew up her neighbor's crop.

Prokhorova's farm, like a million other dacha gardens around Moscow and St. Petersburg, exemplifies the Russian farmers' dire straights.

"We came to Russia to provide good potato seed and we've learned the problems go deeper than providing disease-resistant varieties," says Walter De Jong, Cornell assistant professor in plant breeding.

"I was struck by the fact the Russian dacha farmers use no inputs whatsoever," he says. "No fertilizer, no pesticides, no irrigation, no nothing. I was surprised by the amount of saved seed -- diseased seed -- they kept season after season."

Joining Raman and De Jong on this trip are William Fry, plant pathologist and senior associate dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS); Ronnie Coffman, chairman of plant breeding and director of CALS international programs; and Rebecca Nelson, associate professor of plant pathology.

Aside from the drought and the beetles, the professors saw large amounts of scab (surface lesions), the fungal disease verticillium wilt, gardens filled with weeds, no use of crop rotation and no use of integrated pest management techniques. Mercifully the moisture-loving late blight was not a factor this year because of the drought.

For the dacha farmers, it was layer upon layer of problems. It puzzled the professors that anything grew at all. "What we have seen are conditions that foster disease and reduce yield," De Jong says.

Eleven years after the collapse of communism, parts of Moscow gleam. The products of communism have slowly been washed away by the bright, colorful products of capitalism. Western perfumes, clothing and music permeate the once glum GUM, which now looks like an upscale American shopping mall. Once surly clerks at GUM provide customer service with a smile.

Just beyond GUM and the Kremlin walls, abandoned and half-finished houses punctuate the Moscow countryside. Money to complete the houses obviously ran out.

Still, there are farms everywhere. In Russia, potato agriculture reigns. In 1993 there were 3.5 million hectares (8.645 million acres) of potatoes planted in Russia. Government-run farms accounted for 764,000 hectares (1.8 million acres), private (commercial) farms accounted for 59,000 hectares (145,000 acres) and dacha growers had 2.725 million hectares (6.73 million acres).

By 1999 the government-run and private farms fell off on production while the dacha farms continued to grow. That season there were 232,000 hectares (573,000 acres) of government-grown potatoes compared to 35,000 hectares (86,450 acres) of commercially grown potatoes. The dacha farmers grew 2.98 million hectares (7.36 million acres) of potatoes.

The frightening statistics are in potato production and average yield.

In 1993, the government farms produced 6.2 million tons and by 1999 they produced 2.1 million tons. The commercial farms remained relatively constant, producing 376,000 tons of potatoes in 1993 compared to 315,000 tons, despite a dramatic decline in production area. Dacha farmer production fell off from 3.1 million tons in 1993 to 2.87 million tons in 1999.

William Fry, right, plant pathologist and senior associate dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, examines a potato plant afflicted with the fungus verticillium wilt in dacha farmer Nicolai Schmidt's field in Rogachievo, Russia. Fry is joined by Nigel Harwick, center, of the Central Science Laboratory in England, and Elena Rogozina of the Vavilov Institute of Plant Research in Russia. Blaine P. Friedlander Jr./Cornell News Service

In the shadow of Rogachievo's Russian Orthodox St. Nicholas Church, built in 1780, dacha farmer Nicolai Schmidt grows potatoes for subsistence. Schmidt explains to the visiting Cornell group that he has sprayed pesticide only once this season to clear the Colorado potato beetles. Despite the earlier spray, the plant leaves are all but eaten by the insects.

Schmidt, like the nearby church, is a survivor. During World War II, as the Germans advanced on Moscow, they riddled the church building and its interior mosaics and icons, with machine-gun bullets. Schmidt survived the Soviet era as a tractor driver.

Retired, he now earns a monthly pension equal to $55 (U.S.), or $660 annually. The money he earns in late summer and autumn selling potatoes supplements his meager pension. In a good year, his dacha farm may yield 1,000 kilos of potatoes, netting him an additional $300 in annual income. In a bad year, that same garden may yield only 700 kilos of potatoes, providing him a meager $210 in additional annual income.

Schmidt earns 10 rubles per kilo, which equals 13.6 cents (U.S.) per pound. The Russian table potato cost is similar to the price New York farmers pay for potato seed.

He tells the Cornell group that he is an expert farmer and he does not need new ideas. When asked if he employs crop rotation, he replies yes. Every year Schmidt switches a few rows of his oats with a few rows of his potatoes. He saves his potato seed from previous growing seasons and obtains saved seed of other varieties from his neighbors. All of the seed is diseased. The plot looks devastated.

After meeting the dacha farmers, the scientists from Cornell, the Vavilov Institute, Moscow State University, the All-Russian Institute and Dokagene met for two days. The Moscow group will propose setting up farmer field schools, which would emphasize the use of integrated crop management. The Vavilov group will begin to strengthen its existing extension program, which would include use of late blight resistant cultivars, improved and healthy seed, educational materials and working with garden clubs in the St. Petersburg area.

Dokagene and Cornell will conduct area surveys to learn how seed is distributed among the farmers.

Despite impending extension efforts and better availability of improved, healthy potato seed, the Russian soil still holds dangers that even Cornell's plant breeders and plant pathologists cannot fight. Dokagene's Parker recalls that one day in a nearby, freshly plowed potato field, a worker walked toward him carrying an unexploded German shell from World War II. It was later defused.

Says Parker, "We still dig them up."