The Environmental Resources of Rural People’s Farms

Abstract

In Fig. 4.1 we show diagrammatically the contrasting relationships and dependencies of rural households in the forested region of European Russia, north of Moscow and in the black earth steppe to the south. In this and the following chapters we analyse the various components making up these food production systems, beginning with the land. At the heart of personal subsidiary farming in rural Russia is the household plot or uchastok; the small parcel of land lying within the boundary of rural settlements on which rural dwellers may grow crops and construct outbuildings. Ever since the translation of Karl Wadekin’s (1973) seminal work, the uchastok has been referred to in English language literature as the ‘private plot’, and ‘personal subsidiary farming’ as ‘private farming’. The underlying conceit of the Western view, which it must be remembered grew out of the Cold War ideological battles between communism and market capitalism, was that the private plot was proof of the efficacy of individualism and private property over collectivism and social ownership. In reality, of course, household plots were not ‘private’ in the neoclassical understanding of property rights, since they could be neither bought nor sold (nor, indeed, was there much protection for their users from their alienation) and the food individuals produced did not originate exclusively from the plot but drew on other environmental resources, access to which was covered by a variety of often ill-defined rights and obligations. Since 1991, there have been some important improvements in property rights for the rural population. In particular, they have acquired title deeds to their plots (although there are size limits and their conveyance has to take place according to normative prices) and the use of other resources has, in some cases, been subject to legal regulation or (re)codified. At the local level, land use often remains governed more by custom than by the provisions of statutes and codes. It thus makes sense when discussing rural people’s access to resources to define ‘property rights’ broadly as a field of public claims and entitlements over a variety of resources, rather than as a bundle of clearly defined rights.