Title:
An American Cowboy Aims to Help Russia's Beef Herd
Description: This is
a VOA Special English General News Report.
See text below
Text:
American cowboys are helping to rebuild Russia's
beef cattle industry. Beef production in Russia
collapsed after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The reasons: Cattle breeding and herd management
programs fell apart, and people ate most of Russia's
beef cows. Today, the beef herd in Russia is less
than one percent the size of the American herd. Yet
cowboy Darrell Stevenson says Russia has excellent
resources.
DARRELL STEVENSON: "Tremendous opportunity in this
country in terms of the vast resources. Tremendous
amount of available ground, whether it's tilled or
not."
The Black Angus cows seen here were imported last
year from Montana. Recently, the cows had their
first calves in Russia.
DARRELL STEVENSON: "We're helping establish a local
beef heard, a regional beef herd, and eventually a
national beef herd. And with that comes the
sidelines of educating a labor force."
Viktor Korovkin grew up near this farm in Shestakova.
He saw outsiders come in and take apart the
village's old collective farm. At first, Korovkin
worked as a guard at the ranch. Now, he is a
supervisor. He says the ranch uses modern
technology. Some of it is imported, he adds.
Ekaterina Zimina cares for animals on the ranch. She
says Russians have little experience working with
beef cattle.
EKATERINA ZIMINA: "Because it's 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."
More and more investors are traveling to this area,
south of Moscow, to see the ranch. Land here does
not cost very much, compared to many parts of the
United States.
EKATERINA ZIMINA: "We together can show these people
that this is not something from the movie: that
cowboys really exist and it's (a) really hard job,
and that's possible to do, even in Russia."
And if all goes as planned, people soon will be
eating meat from Black Angus raised on this ranch in
southern Russia. I'm Steve Ember.
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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.
