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.