Who Grows Food in Russia and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Drawing upon an innovative program of surveys in Russia and Eastern Europe, a prominent Western public policy specialist and Russian geographer present an important empirical study demonstrating a wide diffusion of subsistence food production by both urban and rural households in Eastern Europe and by urban households in Russia. With access to land, rather than occupational specialization, determining who grows food in the stressful 1990s, the paper, based on an extensive survey in 1991 and 1992 with 3,550 Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, and Polish respondents and 2,100 Russian, reveals that most people in the post-Soviet realm consume the food that they produce. 1 diagram, 7 tables, 25 references.