Title:
An American Cowboy Aims to Help Russia's Beef Herd
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Twenty years ago, when the Soviet Union collapsed,
so did beef production in Russia. Breeding and
management programs for beef cattle fell apart.
Today, Russia imports much of its beef. Cattle are
raised mostly for dairy. Instead of beef, Russians
have expanded poultry and pork operations. These are
faster and less costly to start. But there is some
new investment in beef production. And one of those
involved is an American rancher and cowboy named
Darrell Stevenson. He sees plenty of room for growth
-- Russia's beef herd is less than one percent the
size of the American herd. He says there is
"tremendous opportunity" in Russia in terms of
resources and available ground. In late two thousand
ten, Darrell Stevenson began sending cows, bulls,
horses and equipment to Russia. He sent more than
fourteen hundred animals. About a third of them
traveled by ship. The others came by plane. Mr.
Stevenson has two Russian partners in what they call
the Stevenson-Sputnik Ranch. The ranch is located on
almost six thousand hectares of land in Voronezh in
the black earth area of southern Russia. The Angus
and Hereford cattle came from ranches in his home
state of Montana. The imported cows have given birth
to their first calves. He says: "We are helping
establish a local beef herd, a regional beef herd,
and eventually a national beef herd." Ekaterina
Zimina grew up in St. Petersburg and trained as a
veterinarian. She worked last year on Darrell
Stevenson's ranch in Montana to learn American
methods. She says Russians have a lot of experience
with dairy cows in barns, but not with beef cattle
on open rangeland. She says: "It is really, really
hard to find good enough people in Russia that can
work with beef cattle, because Russia is world-known
as dairy country. We have lots of dairy herds, dairy
cows. But managing dairy and beef cows is a totally
different thing." Darrell Stevenson is not the only
American involved in projects to build a
high-quality beef herd in Russia. Reaching that goal
will take time -- and a lot more cows. But Ms.
Zimina says the ranch in Voronezh can help show
Russians that "cowboys really exist."For VOA Special
English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. You can download MP3s
of our stories and do English teaching activities at
voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
