East Siberian farmers ready to work on land that may go to Chinese agrarians on lease

CHITA, June 25. /TASS/. Farmers in the Trans-Baikal Territory in East Siberia are ready to cultivate land, which the authorities intend to lease out to a Chinese investor, local legislature member and head of a major regional agri-business Valery Sterlikov told TASS on Thursday. "Local farms are ready to take idle lands and work on them. They only need support like in the Far East, for example, where the program of land allocation for free has kicked off this year. It is necessary to support domestic farmers," he said. The Trans-Baikal authorities did not discuss the possibility of land lease with local farmers, Sterlikov said. "I suggested that the regional Agriculture Ministry should hold a roundtable discussion on this issue. There have been no public discussions so far," he said. The deputy said that if the issue of land lease to a Chinese company was submitted to the Trans-Baikal legislature, he would object to this because he believed that Chinese agricultural producers would deplete the land. Media reports earlier said the Trans-Baikal Territory government had signed a letter of intent with Huae Xingbang wholly owned by China’s Zoje Resources Investment on developing the local agribusiness. Investment in the project is estimated at about 24 billion rubles ($440 million). Under the project, the Chinese investor will take 115,000 hectares of uncultivated lands and pastures on lease in the Nerchinsk-Zavodskoi, Uletovsky, Sretensky and Shilkinsky districts and in the Aginsk-Buryat Area for a term of 49 years, Regional Minister for International Cooperation Bair Galsanov said earlier. If the project’s first stage in 2015-2018 is recognized as successful, the Chinese investor will be able to expand the area of lands on lease. The All-Russian People’s Front (ONF) public movement led by President Vladimir Putin has called for holding hearings on a prospective deal to lease out large chunks of land to a Chinese investor in East Siberia, the Front’s press office reported on Monday. "Attracting investment to deeply depressed regions is a noble thing, especially in the light of all the latest statements by ONF leader Vladimir Putin on the need for the quickest implementation of import substitution projects," the public movement’s press office said. "At the same time, the ONF regional division has the firm position that the territorial authorities must hold public hearings on the issue with the involvement of the expert community and public organizations concerned, with the participation of local residents and the administrations of municipalities on the territories covered by the project," the ONF press office quoted co-chairman of the public movement’s Trans-Baikal headquarters Nikolai Govorin as saying. "The document that was signed is so far an unbinding legal agreement for any of the parties but has already caused local residents’ fears," he added. "I don’t see anything terrible if someone cultivates this land but it is important that this should be done in accordance with Russian law and in compliance with all agro-technical requirements that are effective in the Russian Federation and are set to the Russian producer," ONF regional member Andrei Kharin said. He also said the lease term of almost half a century raised questions, especially considering that this term for Russian leaseholders "is no more than 10 years." The faction of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) in the Russian parliament has said it intends to initiate the parliament’s request for the government to suspend the legal process of the land transfer for lease. The regional branch of Russia’s agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said on Wednesday it had not exposed any instances of land contamination with pesticides and agro-chemicals by Chinese agricultural producers before. It also said it would control the Chinese company’s work in the Trans-Baikal Territory, if the local land was leased out to it. Regional parliament speaker Natalia Zhdanova said the heads of the villages in the Sretensky and Nerchinsk-Zavodskoi districts of the Trans-Baikal Territory were sure that the land transfer to the Chinese company for lease would contribute to the development of these municipalities. Read more