Putting Food on What Was the Soviet Table

A review of immediate policy options on a subject of broad international importance - how to feed the Soviet people in a time of collapse of Soviet central authority. Based on a Geonomics Fall 1991 seminar, 12 Western and Soviet experts argue that massive food aid from the West is, at best, a temporary solution. Short-term humanitarian aid must be combined with a long-term programme that reduces waste; develops the infrastructure, from roads to warehouses; replaces state-controlled distribution and prices with free trade and market prices; and empowers the individual farmer. Striving for the commercial viability of state and collective farms, rather than immediate agrarian privitisation, offers the best route to sustainable agrarian reform. Contributors are Keith Bush, John Cavanaugh, Kenneth Gray, Elmira Krylatych, Vera Matusevich, Allan Mustard, Ivar Raig, Barbara Severin, Gelii Shmelev, Vladimir Tikhonov, Don Van Atta, and Karl-Eugen-Wadekin.