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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: German Farmers Seek their Fortunes in Russia Part II Part 2: Solving Problems Outside the Legal System Nevertheless, there is still the question of what drives a German farmer to faraway Russia. The answer is simple, and has to do with the numbers. The larger a farm is today, the more effectively it can be cultivated. Thanks to GPS and satellites, farming has become largely automated. In addition, diesel fuel is significantly cheaper in Russia than in Germany, and there is also no milk quota. The price per liter of milk is currently about 30 euro cents in Germany, while in Russia prices can be as high as 42 cents. There are also government subsidies to cover interest costs, minimum prices and import duties to stave off foreign competition. Dürr's company, EkoNiva, received €8 million in subsidies from the Russian government in 2010. The world's largest country spends a total of €5 billion a year to subsidize its agricultural sector. Local officials do not always appreciate the Kremlin's good intentions, as Dürr learned in his first few years in Russia. The district administrator in the Orenburg region harassed him for four years. According to Dürr, the man came to him and demanded his "share." "But I don't pay anything, as a matter of principle," says Dürr. After that, the authorities stood in his way whenever possible. That was until the German discovered a solution that was as democratic as it was clever. EkoNiva, the largest farming operation in the area, supported the district administrator's opponent in the next election. The challenger won, and Dürr was left to farm in peace. He learned how Russia works, and how people can assert their rights outside the law, through an encounter with armed, masked men who paid him a visit in his Moscow office. They demanded €800,000 in protection money, but after tough negotiations, they agreed to accept €300,000. But then Dürr turned to his contacts in the government and complained to the Russian deputy prime minister. A few days later, a package arrived. It contained €300,000 in neatly stacked bills. EkoNiva was never harassed again. A Politician and Diplomat Dürr is now much more than just a farmer working in another country. He is an important businessman, a politician and a diplomat. He has learned that there are still issues of German-Russian history lurking in his enormous agricultural realm. His fields surround the old settlement of Rybenskoye. German is still taught in the local school, and the words "Mein Heimatort Rybensdorf" (Rybensdorf, My Hometown) are written on the light blue wall in one of the classrooms. Immigrants arrived in the area from Sulzfeld in southern Germany in 1765 in response to an invitation from Catherine the Great. A teacher wearing a thick fur coat hurries across the street when she sees that Germans have come to visit. She is familiar with the history of Rybensdorf and has brought along old pictures. The first group of settlers consisted of 54 families. They had names like Deutsch, Dreher and Adam, and they planted tobacco and tried raising silkworms. In their heyday, around 1875, there were 2,400 Germans living in the area, where they had established satellite colonies with names like Michaelstal, Olgenfeld and Ruhetal. But then the tide turned, and the local inhabitants began forcing the German-born settlers to leave. The German church is the only prominent reminder of this period that has remained halfway intact. The tower has collapsed, and it takes the combined strength of several people to open the large door to the nave by a crack. The Soviets used jackhammers to enlarge the entrance so that a tractor could drive through. They stored grain in the former church. Dürr soon learned that the Voronezh region also bears a heavy historical burden. The German army spread fear and terror in the area during World War II. In June 1942, the Red Army waged a bloody battle to defend Voronezh against the German Army Group South. After the battle, 370,500 Russians lay dead on the black earth or were missing, while the Germans lost 19,000 soldiers. The Russians struck back a year later. Today the region is still a giant cemetery, riddled with war monuments, some of which are in Dürr's fields. Local museums contain items from the Wehrmacht, the Nazi-era German armed forces. Patron of the Region The large landowner from Germany has his own way of overcoming the skepticism of local residents. His company renovated a war memorial to the Soviet army in Shchuchye. On May 9, the Russian holiday that celebrates German capitulation, Dürr places wreaths at the war memorials in 10 villages in the region. He is already seen as one of the region's patrons. He spent 8 million rubles (about €200,000) to build the kindergarten in Shchuchye. Whenever Dürr walks into the kindergarten today, he is treated like a visiting dignitary from another country. The staff reverently serves him tea and brings out the guest book, and the children pose for photos with Dürr and present him with gifts they have made. Sometimes it seems as if Dürr were buying his way out of the stigma of being a German. His company sponsors a local soccer team, Lokomotiv Liski. It paid for the renovation of the dome of the Cathedral of the Blessed Mother of Vladimir in the same town, and it is funding the construction of a new church in Zaluchnoye, as well as supporting a martial arts school. The local people like working for Dürr, because he pays more than the average wage and, as an old man says sarcastically, because it is always better to work for a German than for no one at all. Local residents also say that new Russian farmers in the neighborhood, like a relative of former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, are known for their poor treatment of employees and business associates. Dream of Buying the Family Farm District Administrator Viktor Shevtsov wants Dürr to stay in the area for the long term, and he is trying to convince him to buy more land. Dürr was even given his choice of building land for a small house. He decided on a breathtaking, cliff-top site above the Don River, and local officials promptly classified the plot as building land. Meanwhile, Dürr has even been awarded the Pyotr Stolypin Prize for the "Russian Agricultural Elite," the first German to be honored in this way. As if to live up to the award, the Odenwald native now plans to expand his operation to 250,000 hectares, an area the size of the German state of Saarland. He also wants to float his company on the stock market -- in Germany, where he still pays a portion of his taxes. Compared to all this, his "old dream" in his native Germany is a very small operation: his grandfather's farm, which had to be sold in 1990 because of inheritance problems. He recently contacted the current owners, who are interested in selling. Fourteen hectares is a ridiculously small amount of land in Stefan Dürr's agricultural empire. But he is not about to pass up the opportunity to buy back the family farm. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan Poster Comment: After that, the authorities stood in his way whenever possible. Same kind of vindictiveness displayed by bureaucrats in the West when you don't go along with their hair-brained schemes. But interestingly, it's not that easy to get rid of them as it seems to be in Russia. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
What a great story. Is there a Part III?
No part III. The story resonates with me because Polish immigrant dad worked for a prosperous German farmer in Saskatchewan for a few years to earn skills and money for his own farm starting with a quarter section. After decades of work starting with pulling trees down with horses, one by one, we cleared the remaining two-thirds of forested land, then upon retirement sold it to a couple of German families, one of whom continued farming and with an ag school education was able to prosper, tripling the size of operations from our three quarters. By getting a dairy quota license they were able to sell just the license for perhaps a million, still keeping all the land etc.
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