Aleksei Volchenko, 37, is a farmer in Kalininsky district, in the Kuban area of southern Russia. There are no large cities or towns here, just stanitsy, Cossack villages. Residents either work their own farms or for big agricultural holdings, which emerged after the old collective farms vanished.
A combine harvester collects soy in the fields of the Kuban Agrocombine company. Ust-Labinsk District, Krasnodar Region. Photo (c): Vitaly Timkiv / visual RIAN. All rights reserved.
In 2007, for instance, in Starovelichkovskaya, a stanitsa in Volchenko’s region, the October collective farm was replaced by a new company belonging to Oleg Makarevich, a prominent businessman in the region. Out of a 13,000 strong settlement, roughly 2,000 people work for Makarevich. Workers lease their land to the company. Several dozen farmers and individual businessmen decided to work for themselves, taking their land and leasing plots from other former collective farm workers. Aleksei, a strong man with working hands, is too young to own his own plot. It was his parents and grandparents who received the land. With help from his parents, Aleksei began to grow potatoes.
