Agriculture in Russia
The agricultural sector survived a severe transition decline in the early 1990s as it struggled to transform from a command economy to a market-oriented system.
[4] Geopolitical analyses of climate change adaptation foresee large opportunities for Russian agriculture during the rest of the 21st century as Siberia's arability increases.
The most fertile regions are in the southern parts of the country between Kazakhstan and Ukraine called chernozem ("black earth") in Russian.
[7] Geopolitical analyses of climate change adaptation foresee large opportunities for Russian agriculture during the rest of the 21st century as Siberia's arability increases.
These farms were legally reorganized as common-stock companies, limited-liability partnerships, or agricultural-production cooperatives and were turned over, usually in their entirety, to the joint ownership of agricultural workers and pensioners.
Today, the term "corporate farm" is an all-inclusive phrase describing the various organizational forms that arose in the process of privatisation without involving distribution of physical parcels of land to individuals.
However, household plots, with a maximum size of 2 hectares (4.9 acres), produced 93% percent of the country's potatoes and 80% of the vegetables, either for family consumption or for sale in the local markets.
[25] As the household plots gained more land in the process of reform, their share in Russia's agricultural production increased from 26% of aggregate value in 1990 to 53% in 2005.
The change in family income outstripped inflation, increasing by 18% in real terms (the Consumer Price Index grew by 252% between 1997 and 1999)[26].
The harvest of small grains (chiefly wheat and barley) moves from south to north and begins in late June in extreme southern Russia.
Spring wheat advances through the reproductive stage during mid-July, when temperatures climb to their highest levels and grains are most vulnerable to heat stress.
It is not unusual for a significant portion of the Russian grain crop—millions of hectares in some years—to remain unharvested, due chiefly to unfavorable weather during the harvest campaign.
[28] In 2016, Russia gained and exceeded Soviet grain production levels,[2] and in that year became the world's largest exporter of wheat.
[3] While agricultural policy in Russia had been poorly structured and largely unsuccessful, some basic trends have helped to create forces for change.
There has been improvement in the agricultural credit situation in Russia over the past five years – for some farms, at least – due largely to subsidies from the federal government.
Banks remain cautious and insist on certain farm management practices and minimum levels of input use before granting loans (a policy which, according to some observers, has had a significant positive effect on overall efficiency in the agricultural sector), but banks' confidence is boosted by increasingly reliable guarantees from regional administrations who see stability of food production as a high priority.
Some viewed crop production as a potentially highly profitable venture, and others were working to guarantee raw materials for vertically integrated food-processing operations.
As non-agricultural sectors grew more rapidly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the share of agriculture in total GDP in Russia decreased from 14.3% in 1991 to 4% in 2011.
[31] The importance of Russia's grain exports in the global market, especially related to oilseeds and wheat, meant that during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine sanctions and disruptions to trade from Ukraine caused a significant increase in global grain prices, with some commentators suggesting that the war would precipitate a 2022 food crises.
[32][33][34][35] In 2024, Russian farmers announced plans to reduce wheat cultivation following significant losses earlier in the year.
Many farmers intend to shift to more profitable crops, such as peas, lentils, and sunflowers, citing better financial returns and lower risks.
The Luxembourg Microbial Culture Collection's European Fusarium Database has information on Fusaria found in the country by sample date, species, chemotype, and host (and previous crop if known).
