Recent grain production boom in Russia in historical context Nikolai Dronin (
[email protected] ) Moscow State University: Moskovskij gosudarstvennyj universitet imeni M V Lomonosova https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6870-5689 Andrei Kirilenko University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions Research Article Keywords: Climate change, statistical models, grain yields, Russia, agriculture Posted Date: February 23rd, 2021 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-248173/v1 License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read Full License 1 Recent grain production boom in Russia in historical context 2 Nikolai Dronina, c, Andrei Kirilenkob 3 4 a Moscow State University, Russia.
[email protected] 5 b University of Florida, USA 6 c Corresponding author 7 8 Abstract. In recent years, Russia has established herself as the leading supplier of grain worldwide 9 and continues to make ambitious plans for raising its grain production in the long-term. Within the context 10 of Russian agricultural history, the recent high growth of grain production is exceptional. This growth 11 however is not fully replicated by the “weather-yield” crop models, which project only moderate yield 12 increase in the 21st century and fail to predict the most recent record growth in grain yields. The difference 13 between the projected climate-dependent yields and observations is especially high in two of the most 14 important agricultural regions, Central Black Earth and Northern Caucasus, while the rest of the 15 agricultural zone is shows good agreement with the regression models. Similar differences were observed 16 in the late 1960s, which we interpret in terms of the fast changes in agricultural technology during the 17 Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) agricultural reforms followed by periods of reversal.