As regrettable as it is, over the past year in the agro-industrial complex of Volyn Oblast even the positive things that had been achieved in previous years have been lost, and not even half of what was promised has been fulfilled. To the ruined agricultural enterprises, more than a hundred more were added during 2003. And in the leadership of the agro-industrial complex we observe a clear tendency toward exclusively administrative methods of influencing economic processes. The program of support for personal subsidiary farms of peasants for 2003–2004 is also not being implemented; with the justification of the absence of legal mechanisms, the losses of peasants in the process of forced grain purchases at low prices have not been compensated. The current authorities work on the principle of firefighting, that is, they begin to take an interest in a problem only when it acquires especially threatening forms. There is no need to go far for examples: the bread crisis of 2003, the deepest in the last five years, became the payment for the ineffective and inept agrarian policy of the government. Only again it was not the government officials who suffered, but ordinary people. As a result, neither the government nor the local executive authorities were able to find civilized methods of regulating the grain market and again resorted to administrative pressure. I am convinced that the bread problem of 2003 is a crime of the government, for which those responsible must answer not only before their own conscience, but, above all, before the law, God and the people whom they shamelessly deceived, once again filling their own pockets. Unfortunately, the government of V. Yanukovych and the executive authorities locally do not know how to give peasants motivation for effective work on the land, or free them from bureaucratic red tape. In no country in the world is agriculture so remote from state policy as in Ukraine. Today one can speak not of a crisis in agriculture, but of a crisis in the agricultural policy of the current authorities, says the leader of "Our Ukraine" Viktor Yushchenko. The inconsistent and unprofessional export-import policy of the past year deprived Ukraine of food, and the budget of revenues, costing taxpayers more than 2.2 billion hryvnias in direct losses. The executive power, headed by Prime Minister Yanukovych, deliberately artificially held down the price of grain in the summer of last year, although it was clear to all sober-minded people that the harvest was not high and that bread would have to be sought all over the world. Authorities that respect their people act completely differently: in 2000, Yushchenko's government released grain prices, giving Ukrainian enterprises and people the opportunity to earn; thanks to an effective social policy—payment of wage arrears and increases in pensions—the people received money, and enterprises received profits. That was the only period in the history of the modern independent state when the executive power truly supported its own producer—the peasant—saving Ukraine's economy and giving people wages and pensions. Now the Ukrainian authorities buy grain abroad for dollars—in Russia, Kazakhstan, even in Belarus—at a price twice as high as what they paid their own farmers. In the summer, government officials explained such robbery by the supposedly high grain harvest, which was supposed to provide enough bread for Ukraine. In January, the State Statistics Committee officially stated: the grain harvest in Ukraine in 2003 amounted to 20 million tonnes (almost half as much as in 2002), the production of food grain amounted to about 5 million tonnes (almost five times less), and the wheat harvest was 3.6 million tonnes (5.7 times less). Was it by chance that Ukrainian peasants were robbed by lowering the price of grain? Was it by chance that agricultural enterprises were not given the funds so necessary to pay people's wages? Was it by chance that now they are overpaying twice as much for foreign grain to importers, because money is being stolen from there for the next elections? No—it is not by chance! The current authorities not only reduced people's pensions and reduced the minimum wage in violation of current legislation, but also deprived the majority of peasants of the opportunity to earn a normal wage today, because not only their present well-being but also tomorrow's pension accruals will depend on it. The current government, in this way, has deprived people not only of what they earned now, but has also stolen future pensions. After this, government officials, especially agrarian ones (already new ones, because the "sinful" ones were quietly hidden away), are racing one another to demand from the Verkhovna Rada permission to sell Ukrainian black soil starting from the first of January next year. Because the poor peasant will sell his little piece of land to anyone for pennies. And oligarchs with fat wallets are already waiting and will then share the profits with government officials. "Our Ukraine" declares that it will not allow the final robbery of the Ukrainian village. Those guilty of provoking artificial famine will be brought to justice and will return the stolen money. And we will not allow the buying up of land from peasants for next to nothing! Let the rich take land on lease and invest funds. And we will force them to pay peasants a full wage and to pay for the lease. Only sufficiency in the family of every ordinary Ukrainian will make Ukraine a full-fledged state. Today it pains me to see how people who truly work hard, sparing neither their strength nor their health, have nothing. They cannot provide even a basic standard of living for themselves and their family. They barely make ends meet. They look to the future with fear. And all this is because the state is ruled by individuals who are indifferent to people's misfortunes; they are guided only by their parasitic interests, by the desire for physiological self-preservation in power. I am convinced that no instincts will help them; the people have their defining quality—to get rid of those who parasitize on their misfortunes, and to live on for the sake of children, for the sake of the future.