Farmers in Belarus are beginning to use agriculture as a means for decontaminating one of the most radiated spots on the planet. After the trgaedy of Chernobyl, many believe that farming will not only help revive a local economy, but can heal the land as fodder exorcises much of the toxicity. NYT
October 22, 2005
Belarus Resumes Farming in Chernobyl Radiation Zone
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

VIDUITSY, Belarus - The winter rye is already sprouting green in the undulating fields of the state cooperative farm here. The summer's crop - rye, barley and rapeseed - amounted to 1,400 tons. Best of all, the farm's director, Vladimir I. Pryzhenkov, said, none of it tested radioactive.

That is progress. The farm's 4,000 acres are nestled among some of the most contaminated spots on earth, the poisoned legacy of the worst nuclear accident in history: the explosion at Chernobyl Reactor No. 4 on April 26, 1986.

Nearly a quarter of Belarus, including some of its prime farmland, remains radioactive to some degree. Mr. Pryzhenkov's farm represents part of the government's efforts to put the contaminated lands back to good use.

The farm, no longer known as the Karl Marx collective but still state-owned, reopened two years ago with the millions of dollars' worth of harvesters, tractors and other equipment provided by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko's government.

A year before that the checkpoints that once restricted access to this region, 150 miles from Chernobyl, disappeared. Families began returning. Some had never left; all needed jobs.

Mr. Pryzhenkov, assigned here from another co-op in what he called "a promotion," has also begun breeding horses and cattle for beef, though not for milk. Milk produced here would be far too dangerous for human consumption.

"This was all falling apart," he said as he drove a battered UAZ jeep over the farm's muddy, rutted roads. "There was nothing for the people to do here."

Mr. Lukashenko, a former collective farm boss himself, declared last year that it was time to revive the contaminated regions, outlining a vision of new homes and villages, of new industry, of rejuvenated farms. "Land should work for the country," he said.

His authoritarian decrees, on this and other topics, have prompted shock, fear and even ridicule, but a scientific study released in September by seven United Nations agencies and the World Bank more or less agreed with him.

It concluded that Chernobyl's lasting effects on health and the environment had not proved as dire as first predicted. It recommended that the authorities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus take steps to reverse psychological trauma caused by Chernobyl, encouraging investment and redevelopment.

Lands where agriculture was banned or severely restricted can be safe for growing crops again, the report said, using techniques to minimize the absorption of radioactive particles into produce.

"It is desirable to identify sustainable ways to make use of the most affected areas that reflect the radiation hazard but also revive the economic potential for the benefit of the community," the report said.

Its conclusions have stirred controversy. Greenpeace denounced it as a whitewash. Even a member of Mr. Lukashenko's government, Valery L. Gurachevsky, the scientific director of Belarus's committee on Chernobyl, called parts of the report "too optimistic."

But here in the countryside, where entire villages were left to rot in an invisible scourge, the report's underlying principle is a welcome one. Gennadi V. Kruzhayev, now 38, had just begun working on the Karl Marx collective when the accident occurred. He has since drifted from job to job. He drove a taxi. He pumped gas. One day recently he was atop a tractor, plowing the black earth for next spring's sowing.

"The main thing," he said, "is to have jobs."

The Chernobyl disaster spewed radioactive material over all of Europe, but naturally the closest areas - Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, then Soviet republics - suffered the worst.

The Soviet authorities declared an emergency exclusion zone within 19 miles of the reactor, a circle straddling the border between Ukraine and Belarus. The zone remains closed, except to the workers overseeing the reactor's decontamination, a few hard-luck pensioners who have drifted back and, increasingly, curious tourists on macabre day trips.

The contamination - particularly from cesium-137 as well as the more deadly strontium-90 and plutonium - was hardly confined to that circle, though. Areas as radioactive as parts of the exclusion zone still appear on maps of Belarus as irregular splashes across the eastern part of the country.

Those areas remain off limits, at least in theory. Around them are areas with lower levels, creating a patchwork of go and no-go zones that by all appearances are routinely ignored.

More than 130,000 Belarussians were relocated in the years after Chernobyl, but mostly to areas with lower levels of contamination, often only a few miles away. About 1.3 million people, or 14 percent of the population, live in contaminated areas, though officials say that with certain precautions, they face little health risk.

In those areas farming never stopped entirely, though the economy collapsed. Instead, the state's farms adopted measures to minimize contamination of crops, including the use of certain fertilizers. Some crops absorb less radiation anyway; those that absorb more are grown only for fodder.

Since Mr. Lukashenko came to power in 1994, the government has tried to expand agriculture in the region, removing restrictions on less contaminated areas. Gennadi V. Antsipov, who oversees reclamation for the country's Chernobyl committee, said the process was complicated and, despite Mr. Lukashenko's urgings, deliberate.

Of 1,000 square miles of contaminated land, only 54 square miles has so far been returned to active agricultural use, including Viduitsy. A periodic survey completed last year found that still more land could be reclaimed.

"Why should we rush this issue?" Mr. Antsipov said in the capital, Minsk. "It is like sending someone to the moon just to prove we can colonize it."

Mr. Lukashenko's government, despite its diplomatic isolation, has worked with international agencies, including the United Nations Development Fund, to improve crop yields and limit contamination of food products. "We are trying to provide people a fishing rod, not a fish as we did before," Valery Y. Shevchuk, the Chernobyl committee's deputy chairman, said.

Radioactive materials, especially cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years, will decay over time, but life in the contaminated parts of Belarus will not soon be normal.

In Viduitsy, Mr. Pryzhenkov pointed out the fields that remained too hot to grow even animal fodder. They are fairly obvious because they are overgrown, though he sometimes consults a map. With precautions, he and others say, the food grown here is safe. The government claims to strictly check all produce; without a certificate, farmers cannot sell what they grow.

Other risks lurk in the forests and fields. Small kitchen gardens, used as in Soviet times for subsistence, are mostly unregulated.

Mushrooms and berries, as well as wild game, absorb high levels of radiation. Fish from local lakes and rivers are toxic. Keeping bees for honey is not considered a good idea. Government advisories warn people not to eat those delicacies.

Vera A. Brausova, 73, who lives in a village called Krasny Kurgan, does anyway. Asked about health concerns, she explained that she had lived through World War II, the Chernobyl accident and a fire that burned down the first house she was evacuated to.

"What health are you talking about?" she said.