Recent grain production boom in Russia in historical context

In recent years, Russia has established itself as the leading worldwide supplier of grain and continues to make ambitious plans for raising its grain production in the long term. Within the context of Russian agricultural history, the recent high growth in grain production is exceptional. This growth however is not fully replicated by the “weather-yield” crop models, which project only moderate yield increase in the twenty-first century and fail to predict the most recent record growth in grain yields. The difference between the projected climate-dependent yields and observations is especially high in two of the most important agricultural regions, the Central Black Earth and Northern Caucasus regions while the remaining agricultural zones show good agreement with the regression models. Similar differences were observed in the late 1960s, which we interpret in terms of the rapid changes in agricultural technology during the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) agricultural reforms followed by periods of reversal. We also interpret the current period of high differentiation between weather-yield model results and collected yields as evidence of a higher than usual contribution of agricultural reforms in yield improvements, which, however, primarily benefit the large-scale producers located in the most productive areas of Russia.