Agriculture
Since the very first beginnings of the history of the Ukraine, the main occupation of its people has been, and [[256]]has remained to this day, agriculture. To give a complete picture of Ukrainian agriculture is beyond the scope of our little book. Even a detailed economic study could not do justice to this task. Hence, we shall have to limit ourselves to its most important phases.
Almost nine-tenths of the Ukrainian people are engaged in agriculture. In the Russian Ukraine, the agricultural percentage of the population, according to official estimate, is 86.4%. This figure is probably correct for the Austrian-Ukraine as well, altho the biased calculations of Buzek place the percentage of farmers among the Ukrainians of Galicia at 94.4%. These figures show us very clearly the significance of agriculture in the economic life of the Ukraine. Now, a person seeing these figures and knowing the fertility of the Ukraine might easily imagine that agriculture here stands upon a high plane. Such a view, however, would be entirely false. Agriculture is on a very very low plane in the Ukraine.
Yet the causes of this sad state of affairs do not lie in the nature of the land. The climate of the Ukraine favors the cultivation of grains as no other does. Barely one small part of the steppe-zone is unfavorable to agriculture, because of its frequent periods of drought. The soil of the Ukraine is one of the most fertile on the whole globe. More than three-fourths of the Ukraine lies in the Black Earth Region, and many varieties of soil in the northwestern part of the Ukraine are by no means without value and at least equal to the best soils of Germany. Not in Nature, but in the cultural conditions, lie the causes of the low grade of Ukrainian agriculture.
The first and main cause is the lack of enlightenment among the people of the Ukraine. The Ukraine peasant cultivates his field entirely after the manner of his forefathers, which may have proved excellent a hundred years ago, and actually did make the Ukrainian peasant appear [[257]]as the best farmer among his neighbors of other races, but they fail completely in these days of intensive cultivation of the soil. The illiteracy of the Ukrainian peasant renders almost inaccessible to him all the great progress of agricultural science. The old methods of cultivation, the primitive agricultural implements, waste his energy and his stock of living resources. The use of agricultural machines, which may be of great significance even in intensive farming on a small scale, is almost unknown to the Ukrainian peasant. The progressive amelioration of the soil and the national rotation of crops is not at all of wide application. And all efforts at enlightening the Ukrainian peasantry are hindered as much as possible by the governments dominating them, by their Polish and their Russian masters.
The highest level, relatively, in agriculture, is attained by the western borderlands of the Ukraine, Podlakhia, the Khohos country, and Galicia. The poorer quality of the soil has always required more intensive cultivation here. Besides, the influences of advanced methods of cultivation sifted thru more easily here, whether indirectly thru the Polish territory, or directly thru the influence of the German colonies. The greater enlightenment of the Ukrainian peasants of Galicia has brought it about that they now regularly apply rational rotation of crops and fertilization of the soil, even with artificial fertilizers, and possess pretty good agricultural implements. The three-field system has disappeared almost everywhere in this region, and continues in use only in the most fertile parts of Podolia. In the mountains, on the other hand, making land arable by means of fires followed immediately by planting, is still a procedure frequently met with. In the Polissye region burning is still frequently applied, but the two-field and three-field systems are used more frequently. On the same principle, agriculture is carried [[258]]on in the northern parts of Volhynia, Kiev and Chernihiv. In the southern parts of these districts, as well as in Podolia, Poltava and Kharkiv, the three-field system predominates. Manuring is usually confined to small plots directly adjoining the farmhouse. Here, too, however, an advance to rational rotation of crops and to the multi-field system is undeniable. In the steppe zone the method of cultivation becomes more careless and the so-called fallow-system prevails. The steppe soil is cultivated for a number of years and then left lying fallow for some time. In very recent years, however, even the steppe-peasant has had to face the hard necessity of going on to the intensive methods of cultivation.
The agricultural implements of the Ukrainian peasants have undergone a great change. The primitive wooden plough, without metal mounting, has been retained only in places, in the Polissye region and the Carpathian country, more as a relic of the fathers than as an agricultural implement. In the entire central zone of the Ukraine, the typical Ukrainian plough, made of wood, with strong iron fittings, is used. Iron ploughs are rapidly coming into use. In the southern steppe zone of the Ukraine, the peasant has by far the best implements. Iron ploughs of different kinds are used here, in imitation of the German colonists, while sowing, harvesting, and also threshing machines are found as the property of large farmers or of agricultural co-operative associations.
It is possible, then, to note a certain progress in Ukrainian agriculture. The Russian and White Russian peasant is much more badly off, but the Ukrainian peasant, too, has a long way to go in order to reach the level of even the Ukrainian large landowners. Various agricultural co-operative associations are working to raise the standard of agriculture among the Ukrainian peasantry. One of these co-operative associations has 90 branches, 1100 local [[259]]groups, and 27,000 members—the Eastern Galician “Silsky Hospodar.” Such associations would, if not hindered in their development (especially by the Russian Government), become of great importance in raising the level of the agricultural industry of the Ukraine, that ancient granary of Europe.
The second cause of the sad condition of Ukrainian agriculture lies in their unsound property conditions. The foreign conquerors, who were continually attracted by the fertility of the Ukrainian land, after taking possession of the land, divided it among their upper classes. The foreign conquerors have succeeded in denationalizing the Ukrainian nobility, have succeeded even in developing the republican Cossack organization into a new class of landowners and, very largely in russifying them. Foreign rule in the Ukraine has always supported foreign ownership of land on a large scale, and the Ukrainian peasant must be satisfied with small, mediocre and widely scattered bits of land.
Now for a few corroborative figures. In the Ukrainian part of Galicia the large estates embrace 40.3% of the total area. In the Governments of Chernihiv, Poltava and Kharkiv, the proportion of peasant-owned land is still rather large (53%, 52%, 59%), because here the property of descendants of the old-time Cossacks is included. Far worse are the conditions in other parts of the Ukraine. In Volhynia the peasant-owned land constitutes only 40% of the area, in Podolia 48%, in Kiev 46%, in Kherson 37%, in Katerinoslav 45%, in Tauria 37%, while in the Polissian Government of Minsk the peasants retain only 28% of the land.
The results of such unsound property conditions are fatal to the ever-increasing density of the peasant population. Land-famine has become chronic all thru the Ukraine. The parcelling out of the large estates which began with such fine results in Galicia a few years ago has now come to [[260]]a halt, and the Stolypin radical agrarian reform in the Russian Ukraine has thus far only slight results to show. To be sure, the amount of property of the medium landowners is decreasing, but the giant estates are not only not losing ground, but even show a steady, tho gradual, growth.
As a result of the ever increasing scarcity of land, the Ukrainian peasants are splitting up their property more and more, trying to rent as much land as possible from the large landowners, and seeking subsidiary occupations in domestic work; but a large percentage find it necessary to leave their fatherland and to seek homes in Caucasia, Turkestan, Siberia, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. And this sad fact need not amaze us. For, while the foreign colonists who settled in Southern Ukraine upon the invitation of Catherine II were given 65 hectares of land per head, the Ukrainian peasant, after the abolition of serfdom, in 1861, was given a maximum of 3½ hectares, and in many cases only 1½ hectares per head. In half a century the rural population has doubled, while the area of cultivation has not increased perceptibly at all. Thus, there existed in the Government of Poltava, as early as twenty years ago, more than 60% of peasant-farms with an area of cultivation of only 1.3 desiatins, while another four percent of estates occupied more than 5 desiatins. How can one speak of progressive farming under such property conditions? Those 60% of peasant farms resemble very closely the sort of plots occupied by cottagers or squatters. And the consequence: 62% of the emigrants who emigrated to Russian Asia in 1910 came from the Ukrainian governments, that “granary” of Russia. And not only from the thickly populated districts of Kiev or Poltava, but also from the comparatively thinly populated, very fertile districts of the Ukraine—from Kherson, Katerinoslav and Tauria.
The third reason for the sad condition of Ukrainian [[261]]agriculture, is the community ownership of land established in the Eastern Ukraine. The basis of their system, which is in vogue everywhere in Great-Russia, is that the land is not owned by the individual peasant, but by the entire community, which apportions it among its individual members. This Muscovite property system is unbearable to the Ukrainian peasant and causes him to neglect his land, since it does not really belong to him. It does not pay him at all to cultivate the ground better than his neighbor, since, in the new apportionment, the carefully improved patch may fall to someone else.
If, therefore, despite all these unfavorable conditions, the agricultural production of the Ukraine and its exports of food stuffs are very great, this fact is due, above all, to the great fertility of the Ukrainian soil and the economic policy of the large landowners, who, in spite of the frequent danger of famine in their own country, continue to export the products of their great estates beyond the borders of the land.
After these general observations, we proceed to a short survey of agriculture in the Ukraine. None of the European countries (with the exception of Russia) possesses as great an area under cultivation as the Ukraine. It amounts to more than 45 million hectares, that is, more than 32% of the area of cultivation of European Russia, which is six times as large as the Ukraine. The proportion of the area of cultivation in the Ukraine is nearly 53% of the total area of the country. In this respect the Ukraine is surpassed only by France (56%). In Germany, the proportion is only 48.6%, in Austria 36.8%, in Hungary 43.1%, in Russia 26.2%. To be sure, the proportion of the cultivated area is very different in different districts of the Ukraine. The most agricultural land is found in the steppe and transition regions: Kherson 78%, Poltava 75%, Kursk 74%, Kharkiv 71%, Voroniz and Katerinoslav 69% each, [[262]]Podolia and Tauria 64% each, Bessarabia 61%, Kiev 57%, Chernihiv 55%. The forest regions possess much less farm land: Galicia 48%, Grodno 40%, Volhynia 37%, Minsk 24%, etc. Besides this, the farm land within each of the above mentioned regions is diversely distributed. In Galicia, for example, the area of cultivation is apportioned as follows: In Eastern Podolia 75–80%, in Western Podolia 60–75%, in Pidhirye only 20–30%, in the Hutzul country only 10%, of the total area. Similar conditions prevail in the Bukowina, in Upper Hungary, Caucasia. In the level regions of the Ukraine these local differences are slighter.
To calculate the general agricultural production of the Ukraine is difficult, if not impossible. By combining various reports, we get, for the yearly average in the beginning of the 20th Century, a grand total of 150 million metric hundred weights. (This number, however, includes only the wheat, rye, and barley production.) In this respect, the Ukraine surpasses all the countries of Europe except Russia. Its production is greater than that of Austria, Hungary or of France, to say nothing of other European States.
Following are several figures about the harvest yield of the Central regions of the Ukraine in 1910. Volhynia produced 73.4 million puds (1 pud = 16.4 kilograms), Kiev 113.4, Podolia 115.9, Kherson 188.6, Chernihiv 40, Poltava 113.6, Kharkiv 95.9, Katerinoslav 194.9, Tauria 138.3, Kuban 214.4 million puds. The total yield of the central regions of the Ukraine (without the borderlands, which also produce a great deal, as for example, parts of Kursk, Voroniz, the Don region, etc.) totalled 215 million metric hundred weights, and was, consequently, six times as great as the harvest yield of Russian Poland, and comprised 39% of the total production of European Russia and over 33% that of the entire Russian Empire. If we [[263]]consider now that the Russian Ukraine comprises only a twenty-ninth part of the gigantic Russian Empire and barely one-fourth of its population, we recognize the great importance attached to the Ukraine as the granary of Russia.
Among the species of grain grown in the Ukraine, wheat is without doubt of the first importance. In the Southern Ukraine wheat takes up half the area of cultivation, decreasing rapidly toward the north and west. In the Government of Kherson the wheat fields cover 51% of the cultivated surface, in Katerinoslav 50%, in Tauria and in the Don region 49%, in Bessarabia 36%, in Podolia 30%, in Kharkiv 29%, in Poltava and in Kiev 22%, in Galicia 14%, in Volhynia 11%, in Grodno 4%, in Minsk 3%, in Chernihiv only 1%. In Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, Galicia, more winter wheat is raised; in the Southern Ukraine, more summer wheat. The mean annual yield per hectare is 10½ hl. for winter wheat and 7½ hl. for summer wheat. The mean annual yield of wheat in the first decade of the 20th Century in Russian Ukraine was 68 million metric quintals, that is, over 46% of the production of European Russia. (In Eastern Galicia it was 1.9 million q.). The chief centers of wheat production in the Ukraine are Kuban (17 million q.), Katerinoslav (12.4 million q.), Kherson (12.4 million q.), Tauria (9 million q.), Poltava (6.3 million q.), Podolia (5.8 million q.), Kharkiv (4.9 million q.), Kiev (4.2 million q.), Stavropol (3.3 million q.), and Volhynia (2.7 million q.). Wheat is one of the chief exports of the Ukraine.
Rye is cultivated chiefly in the northern and western districts of the Ukraine, where it is the chief grain used for breadmaking. In Chernihiv, Minsk and Grodno, rye takes up 48% of the farm land, in Volhynia 38%, in Poltava 3%, in Kharkiv 29%, in Kiev 28%, in the Don region 22%, in Katerinoslav and Podolia 19%, in Tauria 18%, in Kherson [[264]]and Galicia 17%, in Bessarabia only 7%. Rye (almost everywhere winter rye) yields on the average 10½ hl. per hectare. The chief districts of production are Poltava (55 million q.), Volhynia (4.9 million q.), Kiev (4.8 million q.). The total rye output of the Ukraine is as high as 42 million q., that is, over 20% of the Russian output.
Barley is raised mostly in the Southern Ukraine, where it takes up 28% of the farm land in Tauria, 26% in Katerinoslav, 21% in Kharkiv and Kherson, 18% in Bessarabia, 17% in the Don regions. The chief districts of production are Katerinoslav (9.2 million q.), Kherson (7.9 million q.), and Kuban (6.9 million q.) Barley is also an important export of the Southern Ukraine. In other regions of the Ukraine less barley is raised, e.g., in Poltava 13%, in Polissye and in Galicia 9%. The barley production of the Russian Ukraine amounts to 49 million q., therefore 61% of the Russian production of barley.
The importance of the remaining grains is, of course, comparatively slight. Oats take up on the average 16% of the farm land in the Ukraine (21% in the Polissye region, 17% in Galicia, 16% in Chernihiv, 11% in Kharkiv and Poltava, 5% in Southern Ukraine). The total production is 28 million q. Kiev, Volhynia and Poltava take first rank. As a bread cereal, oats are of some importance only among the Carpathian people of the Ukraine. The Eastern Galician oats production amounts to 4.5 million q. Spelt is raised very seldom and then only along the western borders of the Ukraine. Buckwheat is of the greatest importance in the Chernihiv country (about 27% of the farm area and a yield of 0.8 million q. a year), and Kiev, Volhynia, and Poltava each produce almost as much. In other regions of the Ukraine, buckwheat is raised much less frequently (7% in Polissye, 2% in Galicia), in the southern part of the Ukraine almost none at all. Millet is raised chiefly in the Government of Kiev (10% of the farm-land, [[265]]2.3 million q. annual production) and Voroniz (9%). In Kharkiv and Poltava the amount of land used for millet is only 4%, in Galicia 1%. In Kherson the cultivation of the Chugara-millet has been begun. The chief region of Indian corn cultivation is Bessarabia, where this crop takes up 32% of the area of cultivation. Indian corn is also grown in the adjacent regions of Podolia (7%), Kherson (3%), Galicia (3%), and the Bukowina, playing an important part in feeding the population in these regions. The chief regions of corn production are Podolia (1.8 million q.), the Ukrainian part of Bessarabia and Kherson (each 1.1 million q.) and Southeastern Galicia (0.9 million q.).
Besides grains and cereals, some other species of plants are of great importance in the agricultural production of the Ukraine. The first of these is the potato. The fact that the yield of the potato is six or eight times that of the other plants makes it a very important staple. Yet this advantage of the potato is but little exploited in the Ukraine. Only in Galicia does the potato take up 14% of the farm-land (annual production in Eastern Galicia 38.7 million q.). Even in the Polissye region and in Chernihiv, only 6% of the farm-land consists of potato-fields, in Poltava and Kharkiv only 3%, in the Southern Ukraine barely 1%. The total production of potatoes in the Russian Ukraine is 63.2 million q. annually, therefore 22% of the production of European Russia. The large landowners use the potato for distilling alcohol (especially in Galicia), or for cattle-feed.
Various species of beans and lentils are raised everywhere in the Ukraine, but on a small scale, chiefly in kitchen-gardens. In Galicia these vegetables take up 3% of the farm-land, in Polissye and Chernihiv 2% each, in the other districts of the Ukraine still less. The culture of forage (clover, lucerne, fodder-turnip) is still in its infancy in the Ukraine. Only in Galicia do such plants take up more than 10% of the farm-land. [[266]]
The cultivation of commercial plants stands upon a comparatively low level. Most extensive is the cultivation of hemp and flax; but it takes up only a tiny part of the general area of cultivation of the land. Flax is cultivated chiefly in the Polissye region and in Katerinoslav (3% of the farm-land). In Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, it takes up 1 to 2% of the farm-land, in Galicia 1% (together with hemp). In the Southern Ukraine a short-stemmed variety of flax, raised only for obtaining oil, is cultivated widely. Hemp takes up on the average 1% of the farm-land, only in Chernihiv as much as 4%. All the hemp products are used in home industry, white the flax products are mostly exported. Another plant grown for the sake of oil thruout the Ukraine, but especially in the eastern borderlands of the country, is the sunflower. Rapeseed is grown only by the large landowners, chiefly in Kherson, Kiev, Poltava, and Podolia. Poppy is cultivated everywhere in the Ukraine even by the peasants. Among the industrial plants of the Ukraine the sugar-beet plays a very important part. In the year 1897 Russia had 410,000 hectares of beet-fields, 330,000 hectares of this area being in the Ukraine. The total Russian production of sugar-beets was 60 million metric hundredweights, of which 50 millions, that is, five-sixths, came from the Ukraine. The most important centers of sugar-beet production lie in the Governments of Kiev, Kharkiv and Podolia, much less being produced in Volhynia, Chernihiv and Kursk. In the Austrian Ukraine sugar-beet culture is developed only in Southeastern Galicia and Northern Bukowina. Not only the large landowners, but also frequently the peasants, engage in sugar-beet culture with great profit.
Another important commercial plant of the Ukraine is tobacco, which takes up over 50,000 hectares of farm-land, 3000 hectares of it in Galicia. The chief districts of tobacco production are Chernihiv, Poltava, Kuban and Tauria. [[267]]Much less is produced in the Black Sea region in Podolia, Volhynia, Bessarabia, Kherson and Kharkiv. The tobacco production in Russian Ukraine in 1908 amounted to over 660,000 q., that is, 69% of the total production of Russia, in Galicia 50,000 q. Tobacco culture has a great future in the Ukraine, because the ground and the climate are wonderfully fit for it. But first the unfavorable conditions, which lie chiefly in the poor organization of the tobacco trade, must be removed.
Hops are raised in the Ukraine to a very slight extent. In Galicia only the large landowners engage in a little hop culture on 2300 hectares of ground. In Volhynia the Chekhic colonists have introduced the cultivation of hops. It comprises about 3000 hectares of land and yields over 16,000 q. of hops a year, that is 40% of the total Russian output of hops.