Russia offers mothers a free home if they promise to bear three babies

Telegraph ^

[RussianConservative]

You should check it out...sounds like a future for you. Russian agriculture production up 100% in last 3 years, but still maybe fourth of what it could be. Lots of old, not so good, practices. Oh, and other use for sheep...anti-personal mine detectors.

[Aliska]

Subsequent posters, but not the article itself, mention abortion. That is a prime cause why Russia has become so depopulated by people of a certain ethnicity.

I would like to see Russia recover without presenting a threat to the rest of the world like they have in the past.

They have one thing going for them we no longer have. There is plenty of land available for homestead types.

[RussianConservative]

What kind of info?

[RussianConservative]

Russia was no threat to world, Soviets were. As for Abortion, down by 23% but still to high.

[Aliska]

To us Russia and Soviets were synonymous. Nevertheless, your point is a good one. I don't think the Russian people have really been a threat to anybody.

Good that abortion is down.

Three kids in 5 years is a bit much. If you look at the past in America, nature seemed to space children about 2 years apart when people used to have lots of children here. They would be a little more fair to make it 6 to 8 years.

I hope it works. It sounds like a nice way to go to me compared to how complicated things have gotten here for families, even though we probably have more fancy stuff. For now . . .

[Aliska]

Then can my daughter buy a few thousand acre farm?

Why so large? Just 100 years ago, people could live quite nicely on about 250 acres. Some had more, but some even had less. Another big thing is that you could build a nice, roomy, sturdy house without signing your life away with a 30-year mortgage.

[SauronOfMordor]

Subsequent posters, but not the article itself, mention abortion. That is a prime cause why Russia has become so depopulated by people of a certain ethnicity.

No. Abortion is a symptom. The lack of desire for children is the cause.

If they banned abortion, women who didn't want kids would just be more careful about their birth control, and the net effect on population would be the same.

To get the population back up, you must first address why the middle-class is less interested in having children. Part of it is the tax burden the middle-class has to carry -- they're supporting their own kids and the kids of the unproductive class as well.

[Rytwyng]

...for $5K can have a good farm in country side, plenty of half empty villages. Retire or home school. Very Christian country with very good growth rate. Only thing, and there are parties trying to change it, no pistols larger then 25 caliber...but you are free to kill any attackers and the law now backs you.

Ochen horosho!

[Rytwyng]

Russian women remarkably resillient...most with kids don't look it and under 30 for this, so not major thing.

Eto pravda. Zdyec', v Los Angelese, u nas yest' mnogo ochen' krasniye Russkie dyevuski. Moya zhena -- 3/4 Polskaya -- tozhe ochen' krasnaya.

[blackdog]

Thank you for your post. First of all, a mortgage bank will not finance farmland. That is considered business loan material. The house and ten acres, yes. Not an operating farm. Hence the term "hobby farmer".

There is a hugh difference in producing food for a country and producing food for a few hundred. In order to economically produce in todays market you must produce big. You will not even get a custom combine outfit to combine a 40 acre field any more. They can barely turn around.

Economy of scale is what farming has become. The average size of a mid size grain producer now is about 3,000 acres in the midwest. Most of that is leased land and contract land.

In order to buy a decent baler today you need a 125HP tractor. That's like $80,000! That baler can pump out five 1000lb bales a minute. It takes about 20 minutes to bale an 80 acre hay field. That used to take an entire day! It used to take four people. Now it takes one guy and a front end loader to stack the 480,000lbs of hay. You don't even bother putting it in a barn.

Lastly, sheep, cattle, and whatever else you ranch should never spend more than three days on any one patch of pasture in a 21 day period. This is due to parasites. They can kill your entire lamb crop in a week. If you had 500 sheep, that means you would need about 300 acres, assuming none of that land is used for hay production. You can see very quickly that you need lot's of land to pasture raise livestock. Pasture raising is a lot cleaner, healthier, and economical than a feedlot operation.

[RussianConservative]

Eta y vseh slavyanyah...haroshaya genetika.

[Nick Danger]

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Aids, alcoholism and poverty have pushed the country's population into decline.

If that's true, this is the first time in human history that "poverty" has caused a decline in the birth rate. Children are the 'social security system' in poor countries. Having lots of them is how you make sure you'll be taken care of in your old age.

It is generally true that the richest countries have the lowest birth rates, and within rich countries it is the poorest people who have the highest birth rates.

Comes now Russia, a decidedly poor country at the moment, but one whose birth rate looks more like France's or Italy's than, say, the equally-industrialized South Korea's.

It ain't poverty, and it ain't alcoholism. It's feminism. Reducing women's role to the same sort of wage-slavery that has been men's lot is how you get a whole culture to go quietly out of business.

[RussianConservative]

Wrong, feminism is much milder in Russia then other parts. Russia is an enigma. It is education. The over all population is extremely educated, causes own problems. More educated then society needs to be...someone has to be dumb and do dirty work. That is also why, Russia's # of children gone up from 1.1 to 1.5 or so in the last 3 years...better economics. The richer we get, the more powerful and populace...we work the opposite of the West and in the end it just might prove the survival gene.

[RussianConservative]

Also note: the richer Russia gets the lower taxes and less socialized, while West heads other direction.

[Nick Danger]

feminism is much milder in Russia then other parts

Use whatever term you like. Female labor force participation in Russia is among the highest in the world. It is comparable to Sweden's, which has the highest rate of female labor force participation in the West. The fertility rate in Sweden is 1.6 children per woman, well below the replacement rate.

I agree that the whole issue is messy, and that there are a lot of factors operating simultaneously. Education may well be one of them. A high divorce rate is another.

[RussianConservative]

But you miss that grandparents often take care of children while parents work. Worked for me and my cousins.
Called multi generational households...I know idea dead in America.

[Rytwyng]

Also note: the richer Russia gets the lower taxes and less socialized, while West heads other direction.

Ugh. Don't remind me. I'm already having a bad day.

[Aliska]

I know they have to do what makes sense economically, but it makes me sad how it has become. I'm glad they don't have to work in the same manner they used to do, and I'm glad I don't have to cook for threshers over a hot woodburning stove, but we have lost something precious. The good part of it, that is.

I didn't know about the mortgage part, but people who built those farm houses paid cash for the labor and materials or built them themselves. It was possible then. Not now. It seems ironic to me that people who want to live this lifestyle would do better to go to Russia.

I do think people who really want to live like that can still do it in the US, to a certain extent, but people and especially kids wouldn't take to working that hard any more and city life beckons.

Driving through rural America isn't as picturesque as I imagine it once was and people are few and far between and farm families are small.