Siberian Farmers Planting Less This Year Because of Falling Prices for Grain and Rising Prices for Equipment – and Some Say Chinese will Buy Up Their Land

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 7 – Siberian farmers say that unpredictable but generally falling prices for agricultural products and rising prices for equipment and fuel are causing many of them to reduce planting for the coming year and even sell off their land to agro companies and foreigners, like the Chinese, even though doing that will bring “nothing good.”

            That is because the Chinese don’t care anything about the people on the land but only on taking control of the territory and won’t invest in the infrastructure that the Russian agriculturalists need, farmers and farmer activists living near Omsk told a local news agency this week (ngs55.ru/text/business/2026/01/06/76172537/).

            These developments will hit the Russian market some in the coming year, but they will hurt Russia even more in the outyears because farmers say their children can see what is going on and aren’t interested in continuing in what in many cases had been a family business. (nemoskva.net/2026/01/07/s-takoj-czenovoj-politikoj-nikakaya-ekonomika-ne-proschityvaetsya-sibirskie-fermery-gotovyatsya-k-tyazhelym-vremenam/).