Grain production trends in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan: New opportunities in an increasingly unstable world?

Abstract

Grain production in the countries of the former USSR sharply declined during the past two decades and has only recently started to recover. In the context of the current economic and food-price crisis, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan might be presented with a window of opportunity to reemerge on the global agricultural market, if they succeed in increasing their productivity. The future of their agriculture, however, is highly sensitive to a combination of internal and external factors, such as institutional changes, land-use changes, climate variability and change, and global economic trends. The future of this region’s grain production is likely to have a significant impact on the global and regional food security over the next decades.

Keywords

Russia / Ukraine / Kazakhstan / food security / global change / grain production

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by the NEESPI and NASA LCLUC project entitled Evaluating the Effects of Institutional Changes on Regional Hydrometeorology: Assessing the Vulnerability of the Eurasian Semi-Arid Grain Belt. We would like to thank Dr. Jiaguo Qi and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and help with preparation of the final version of this manuscript.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg