Moscow - Across the frozen sweep of Russia this winter, poor people will stock their cupboards with food bearing the distinctive stamp of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Wheat, corn, pork, beef - a cornucopia of American farm products will be headed to Russia under an agreement signed Friday. In all, 3.1 million tons of U.S. food will be shipped, more than half of it an outright gift.
It won't be the first time that American farmers have sent surplus grain, meat and other goods to a needy Russia. Grain shipments have been a regular feature of U.S.-Russian relations, and many Russians still joke about “Bush legs,” the shipments of American chicken legs donated by former President George Bush in the early 1990s.
What is unclear this time is how badly Russians need the food.
This has been a disastrous year for Russia. The economy collapsed in August, and food imports practically ceased. The ruble was devalued and inflation soared. Many Russians continued to go without regular paychecks, giving them little ability to buy food at any price.
To top it all off, cycles of drought and floods helped produce the worst grain crop in 40 years.
Despite all that, top Russian officials were insisting until a few weeks ago that they had plenty of food to get through the winter and no need for donations from other countries.
Even after Russia began negotiating with U.S. officials for food shipments, Agriculture and Food Minister Viktor Semyonov said there was “no threat of food shortages, no grounds for the threat of food shortages today.”
It's hard to tell whether that was pride or reality talking.
True, grain production slumped as much as 45 percent this year. But the biggest shortage was in forage wheat for livestock. Russian farms, notoriously unproductive and unprofitable, have drastically trimmed their livestock herds in recent years and have less need for grain.
Elena Tyurina, marketing director for the Institute for Agrarian Market Trends, said Russia has actually produced more grain for human consumption than it needs.
Dairy production is up, and Russia continues to export large quantities of the seeds used to make vegetable oil, she said.
On the other hand, meat production is down. And while Russia exports the seeds, it doesn't produce enough actual vegetable oil for its own needs and must rely on imports.
In fact, First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov warned last week that while Russia remains heavily dependent on food deliveries from abroad, food imports have plunged 85 percent in the past two months.
“Such is the scale of the existing threat,” he said.
The United States is not the only potential donor responding. The European Community has been discussing the possibility of supplying food aid this winter. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has launched a campaign to feed 1.4 million Russians this winter in the 12 most distressed regions.
U.S. officials were reluctant to discuss the reasoning behind their decision to offer aid, although it would obviously benefit American farmers and reduce unneeded U.S. surpluses.
Christopher Goldthwait, who led a U.S. delegation on food aid and is general sales manager for the USDA's Foreign Agriculture Service, called it a “win-win situation” for Russians and American farmers.
Officials with both the EC and the Red Cross conceded that it was not easy to determine whether the food is truly needed.
“It is very difficult to make our own judgment,” said Bertrand Soret, a spokesman for the EC office in Moscow. “We have to rely on statistics provided by the Russian government.”
And despite the Red Cross' ambitious plans, Peter Kurlandsky, the official in charge of its Russian winter aid program, conceded: “We don't have any direct information about whether there will be a dire food shortage in the country.”
As aid officials note, it is better to err on the side of caution than face the consequences of widespread malnutrition and starvation.
Last year, the Red Cross gave food to 800,000 Russians. “In some cases, I have no doubt, people would not have had food without our food parcels,” spokeswoman Caroline Hurley said.
In particular, she said, the Red Cross worries about people getting too little protein, and hopes to lard its shipments with plenty of canned meat and fish this winter.
Even if Russia has enough food, it has two large problems preventing people from getting it: a poor distribution system that may fail to reach the farthest flung parts of the world's largest country, and the simple fact that many people lack the cash to buy food.
“In any famine, there tends to be enough food available,” said Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who was among the architects of Russia's transition to a market economy.
The problem, he said, is that people can't afford the food, or can't get access to it. He suggested both factors are likely at play in Russia this year. But, like most people, he stressed that he doesn't really know whether there's a need for aid or not.
In a recent poll, 74 percent of Russians surveyed nationwide said they were not worried about getting enough food this winter. But 14 percent did feel threatened by hunger - a small percentage, but a lot of people.
Uncertainty, and an unwillingness to be tragically wrong, may ultimately be the most persuasive reasons for the West offering - and Russia accepting - food aid.
“It would be a sin to refuse humanitarian aid,” observed Pavel Yemelen, a member of the Russian parliament and spokesman for the rural-based Agrarian faction.
Russian agriculture “has reached the breaking point,” he said. “Now we are forced to stretch out our hands for assistance.”
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