We Will End Up Hungry: Hrant Bagratyan

Former Prime Minister of Armenia Hrant Bagratyan has written: "The farmers' protest against the government is completely justified. A small private farmer cannot surrender part of his own property to some incomprehensible slaughterhouse. The farmer has already been ceding a significant portion of the added value due to high profitability to non-farming/citizen intermediaries. Now, the slaughtering function is being added to that. We are also taking that away from the farmer. Moreover, sooner or later, these slaughterhouses will be centralized in the hands of oligarchs. Slaughterhouses that do not belong to farmers are characteristic of collective farms and state farms. Again, the application of this policy will lead to the consolidation of agricultural enterprises and the restoration of collective farms and state farms. Now, the state needs to establish slaughterhouses (taking on the capital costs, a small portion of which should be repaid over time), turning them into cooperatives where shares (not stocks) will belong to those farmers whose animals are slaughtered or processed there. Only family members of shareholding farmers should work in these cooperatives. Thus, the farmer will gladly agree and will also receive a share and additional income. These specific matters were told to the Ministry of Agriculture 1.7 years ago. Unfortunately, the agricultural sector has been entrusted to someone who envisions it as several large state farms, who speaks here and there about the mistakes of small privatization, considering all of it robbery. He is trying to restore the Russian agricultural structure in Armenia. In the end, we will be left hungry."