When people look at Putin they probably don’t think about cows. Putin thinks about cows, at least sometimes. They are in one of the national “priority projects,” aimed at developing the country’s agriculture (the other three are about education, health and housing). It focuses on animal husbandry and tries to get young people into the countryside, much of which is a social disaster area. The social part of it is interesting, but let’s put that aside for now - this is a food blog, and if all that money budgeted for the project does anything it’ll have a serious influence on what Russians eat.

Russians are quite innocent about food. Grocery shopping here was at first a disorienting experience: imagine walking into a library confident in your knowledge of the Dewey decimal system and finding that all the books are simply alphabetized by title: novels, fine art albums, legal texts, bible commentaries… Russian foods don’t come with half the category labels that American ones sport. There’s no organic. No cage-free. No grass-fed. No kosher. No low carb. No stories of how one’s grandma used to make this yogurt from the milk of a brown cow called Daisy. Food choices are about taste and wallets and waistlines - not identity, values, policy.

There is certainly an understanding of what good food is, but the goodness is not on the label. The best food is perhaps one without a label at all - it’s the stuff grown by the family itself, by friends and relatives, by someone’s grandma on a quarter-acre or land an hour out of the city by electric train, and sold out of a canvas sack next to a tram station. The second-best, if one ended up in a store, is Russian. Russians fervently believe that their chickens, vegetables, even sausages and yogurt are better - safer, less processed, “cleaner” of antibiotics, pesticides, artificial flavorings and preservatives, grown in a purer environment.

This food patriotism surprised me - it somehow arose out of profound suspicion of foods Soviet and unquestionable preference for foods imported, and I don’t know when the switch took place. But it’s often justified. Russian chickens get fewer antibiotics. Russian cows eat more grass (although nobody would put it in these terms). Fewer pesticides are applied to Russian fresh fruit and vegetables (and sometimes they look awful because of it) and fewer ingredients are added when preserves are made out of them. A fair amount of Russian agricultural land is effectively organic, although only a tiny percentage is certified as such under European or American regulations. (Whether Russian sausages still contain more cellulose than meat I don’t know - but I’m suspicious and don’t buy them.)

All this goodness is not the result of conscious environmental and agricultural policy. Antibiotics, pesticides, artificial flavors, and industrial feed for cows are expensive to import and Russia doesn’t make a whole lot. The cleanliness of Russian food is dumb luck, a fortunate side effect of unfortunate years of agricultural mismanagement, which also led to deplorable rural poverty. Now that the government is trying to do something about it - as it should - the food quality is also coming under threat. All the more so because it’s simply not an issue. Russian carrots are assumed to be organic, not certified as such. Russian chickens are trusted to be free of antibiotics, but no-one would be responsible if that trust is broken because there are no explicit claims. Some producers used to label their stuff “ecologically clean” (the closest Russian has to “organic”) but instead of regulating what the term must mean the Russian government simply forbade its use.

This stuff can be successfully marketed, and Russians will even pay extra for the quality assurance. The Alexeevsky collective farm outside of Ufa, which now operates several brick-and-mortar stores as well as stalls in all the farmers’ markets is a good example. It does not advertise itself as organic, but earns trust simply by being a no-nonsense local producer who stakes its name and reputation on every carrot it sells. The produce is basic: tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants in summer, cabbages, radishes, and carrots in winter, fresh herbs in little pots all year round, dairy and smoked lard - and the stuff is good. Good enough that I gladly put up with brusque service, waiting in line (they have lines!), and the need to bring my own plastic bag.

If you can sell it at profit to price-conscious Russians, you can certainly sell it abroad, where “organic” premiums are much higher. And there’s growing demand for certified organic at home, and organic stores and restaurants are appearing in Moscow. Ironically, they have to import their goods as Russian products do not carry the requisite certifications.

It would be unrealistic to expect all Russian agriculture to become organic - if nothing else, the government is also trying to develop domestic fertilizers industry and compete with cheap imported meat from Eastern Europe. But Russia should take advantage of its agricultural backwardness, and start labeling things and letting consumers make more informed and conscious choices.