Material Innovations

Farmhouse of the type offered by the Village Development Program of Belarus

How would you like to live in a new, three-bedroom, two-story home with a yard large enough to subsist-farm as well as a barn/utility building and acreage to grow a production crop?  Sound good?  Did I mention it was free?

This is the allure of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko’s Village Development Program which began in 2005.  Responding to the increasing flight of younger adults from villages to the cities, Lukashenko ordered an expensive and controversial government program to reverse the flow of labor from the villages.  According to statistics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the Belarussian population living in villages was 56% in 1970 but has atrophied to 25% in 2010.

Though not a problem limited to Europe, without exception, all central and eastern European countries have experienced similar declines in rural populations.  According to LSE, “Rural out-migration leaves behind the retired, those on sick pensions, those whose only work is on their household plot, and those whose education stopped after primary school. There is a common impression that moving away for education or work is a first, permanent step taken by younger people who are turning their back on village life.”(link here)

So what’s the problem with moving to the city for education and work opportunities?  Chiefly, the problem is a catastrophic reduction in foodstuffs.  If everyone leaves the countryside, there are no farmers to feed the nation.  To entice younger adults back to the farming life, President Lukashenko has spent 21 billion US dollars building houses and improving infrastructure in 1,481 villages officially designated as Agritowns.

Not just 24,472+ houses, the plan has created thousands of miles of roads; hundreds of clinics, gymnasiums, cultural centers, craft centers, retail shops and schools; and technology assistance supported by applied research programs focused on animal husbandry, food cultivation, and land-use techniques.  Impressive in its breadth and intensity, the state is also investing in agriecotourism by enticing Westerners to experience the village life as a form of total-immersion entertainment.  The intent behind the urgent action is to create food, and lots of it.  Lukeshenko wants to not only feed his country, but use food exports to buttress the GNP as Belarus is a country of little natural resources besides forests and farmland.

This government initiative was originally designed as a five-year experiment.  Now entering its final year of funding, how has it fared?  Initial government reports herald the material expenditures as expressed in terms of numbers of structures completed (i.e. 24K+ homes, 199 clinics, 412 kindergardens, 14 craft centers etc.).  Although approximately 2,000 houses remain unoccupied, it can be inferred that 22,000 families have been placed in the Agritowns and are enjoying the fruits of significantly improved infrastructure.  One eye-opener, is that the measures of success have proven to be difficult to design, implement, and validate and are now the focus of an intense activity by the National Academy of Science.

So why do 2,000 free houses remain empty?  One chief complaint of those who have moved into the homes is that they were forced into them.  There is a pervasive sentiment among the citizenry that receiving one of these free homes is no less than the kiss of death.  Thus, the government has had to resort to lawfully forcing people into the villages.  In such cases, a refusal to relocate is a criminal act.

Still, what are the reasons for the dissatisfaction?  When polled for their opinion, recipients of the hand-outs complain of land too small to sustain the family (and shed-sized “barns” so small they only fit a cow on the diagonal); those relocated after completing advanced degrees tend to feel they are the smartest people in the village and lack intellectual stimulation; and that the villages are “Labyrinths” with an easy way in and no way out due to lack of economic opportunities.  Though most are able to provide their own food and dairy, the problem is undoubtedly the lack of means to sustain the family economically.  Further, for the land areas that might be workable to produce surplus crop yields, the methods are inefficient and the markets anemic.

With no meaningful industry in many of these agritowns, there are no jobs that earn real money.  Though entrepreneurial endeavors are encouraged by the communist-turned-free market economy, few people have the basic knowledge necessary to start a business and if they do, are often exasperated by the lack of government cooperation and the extremely high business taxes that castrate most start-ups.  Whereas the future well-being of the country is dependent on more food production, the well-being of the village is dependent on industry to create income opportunities.  Until people can make money, an undeniable necessity in the global market economy, there will be difficulty attracting young urban-lust families back to the village way of life.

However, one design opportunity the Belarussian officials might consider is a targeted information campaign.  If the young urban families receive the message that market forces in the urban centers will continue to drive-up the prices of food to the point where it is impossible for the average family to generate enough money to buy food, and that the value of farm-produced food will thus skyrocket, the highest quality of life might soon be found at the front of this inevitability and a move to the village could prove to be VERY lucrative.

If all or even most countries will have to deal with the approaching problem of diminishing food supplies, Belarus is leading other countries in thinking about how to provide for its people in such a future.  I can say one thing with certainty: I’m glad I have my Belarus visa stamped!  However, as with everything, nothing is perfect.  To move to south-eastern Belarus where my wife is from, even if to accept a free government farm, is to move to the place where some 60% of the fall-out from Chernobyl landed.

Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor fallout map - 1986

But hey, its a small world.  And fallout doesn’t recognize international borders…

Tracking air-borne radiation from Chernobyl - days 1,2 & 3.

Big Town Sandwich

On the topic of obesity in America, here are a few observations from an outsider from the East.  I am shocked at the size of your portions which are way too large.  Even half of a half sandwich is so big, I can’t finish it and have to throw the rest away.  I ate a sandwich from Big Town Hero yesterday.  I ordered the half sandwich (8″), which was no less than twelve inches.  There was the full-sized sandwich listed as twelve inches – how big is that one in reality, eighteen inches?  I couldn’t finish the “half” sized eight inch item.  Sure, I could have taken the remains home and stored them in the refrigerator; but how appetizing is a day-old sandwich with soggy bread and limp lettuce?  I felt forced to throw the rest away.
At a restaurant, even when I think food is a small portion on the menu, it comes as SO MUCH.  Why don’t they print quantities on the menus here like in Belarus where the menus specify weight or volume of items?  But it’s not just the quantity of food that seem problematic.  Besides portions being too big here, the content of the food is not nutritious, there are too many modified ingredients, too much corn syrup, and too many chemicals.  This is the difference between obesity in Eastern Europe and obesity in the West – in Belarus, people who eat too much are eating too much real and natural food so in spite of their large appearance, they still look somewhat healthy, unlike the obese population here which eats too much junk and has health problems way beyond just obesity (if that’s not enough of a problem on its own).

Though there is a larger diversity of foods here which look more visually appealing, their ripeness is questionable.  Why is it common here to use nitrogen gas to artificially accelerate ripening when nature has that process refined to perfection already?  As a result of artificial ripening which doesn’t allow sugars and other compounds to form properly the taste is flat and the nutritional content questionable.  In a related example, the meat looks SUPER red (I’ve never seen meat so red) but when you open the package, inside the meat is grey and lifeless.  What’s that about?

Village House and Garden - Illustration by Mo Morales

Where you Americans have useless lawns, Belorussians have gardens in which they grow their own staples (potatoes, carrots, beets, cabbage, etc) on their property if they live outside the city.  For city dwellers there are rent-free plots available outside the city which are serviced by buses provided at no charge.  Here, there is a farmer’s market one day here, another day there, but in the East there’s an open-style market in every micro-district, open everyday, and the inventory is in large part generated by the overages of common folk’s gardens.

We walk to the market in Belarus, we do it everyday or every other day.  It’s healthy to take a short walk each day for fresh food.  In America, the markets are centralized and so far apart, so I’m forced to buy food for a week which will sit in a refrigerator slowly losing flavor and freshness (decomposing) until consumed.  And getting that week’s amount of food is difficult, especially without a car.  The bus isn’t an attractive option since it creeps along, stopping at every block.  This may be a factor in why people are so overweight since no one walks more than one block here.  I heard that the regional transportation standard specifies a bus stop every 300 feet or something ridiculous like that.

I think you Americans should wake up and realize that the food you depend on is out of your control – a situation that is killing you.

American Diet