A NEW ENEMY FOR RUSSIAN AGRICULTURE.

Bad government decisions rather than badweather will lead to another decline in agricultural production in 1995. TheRussian Federation produced 81 million tons of grain in 1994, down 18% from1993, and the amount will fall still further this year, BWW reported May 17.As a result, Moscow will be forced to buy more grain and meat abroad withscarce hard currency reserves, or allow the population to suffer. The mainculprits for this decline, the paper said, were the government’s failure toensure adequate supplies of fertilizer and Moscow’s assumption thatprivatization would solve all problems. Russia now has 285,000 private farms,but most are in bad shape: 20,000 failed last year, largely because of a lackof machinery.

Kiosk Capitalism Finds A Defender.