Will Russian Agriculture Benefit from Climate Change?

Climate change threatens large swaths of global agriculture. However, the global North could benefit agriculturally and economically from warming. Russia is therefore increasingly portrayed internationally as a major beneficiary of climate change. Is climate change driving today’s agricultural heavyweight player to become an internationally dominant agricultural giant? In this article, I reflect on recent and important scientific studies to investigate this question

Wird die russische Landwirtschaft vom Klimawandel profitieren?

Der Klimawandel gefährdet große Teile der globalen Landwirtschaft. Der globale Norden könnte jedoch von der Erwärmung landwirtschaftlich und ökonomisch begünstigt werden. Russland wird daher international immer häufiger als großer Profiteur der Erwärmung dargestellt. Treibt der Klimawandel den heutigen Agrar-Riesen zum international dominierenden Agrar-Giganten? In diesem Artikel ordne ich aktuelle und wichtige wissenschaftliche Studien zu diesem Thema ein und untersuche diese Frage

Machine learning reveals complex effects of climatic means and weather extremes on wheat yields during different plant developmental stages

Rising weather volatility poses a growing challenge to crop yields in many global breadbaskets. However, empirical evidence regarding the effects of extreme weather conditions on crop yields remains incomplete. We examine the contribution of climate and weather to winter wheat yields in Ukraine, a leading crop exporter with some of the highest yield variabilities observed globally. We used machine learning to link daily climatic data with annual winter wheat yields from 1985 to 2018. We differentiated the impacts of long-term climatic conditions (e.g., temperature) and weather extremes (e.g., heat waves) on yields during the distinct developmental stages of winter wheat. Our results suggest that climatic and weather variables alone explained 54% of the wheat yield variability at the country level. Heat waves, tropical night waves, frost, and drought conditions, particularly during the reproductive and grain filling phase, constitute key factors that compromised wheat yields in Ukraine. Assessing the impacts of weather extremes on crop yields is urgent to inform strategies that help cushion farmers against growing production risks because these extremes will likely become more frequent and intense with climate change.Leibniz-Institut für Agrarentwicklung in Transformationsökonomien (IAMO) (3460)Peer Reviewe

Wie lässt sich das Getreideproduktionspotenzial Russlands mobilisieren?

Russland leistet schon heute als weltweit größter Weizenexporteur einen beachtlichen Beitrag zur globalen Ernährungssicherheit. Zudem birgt Russland großes bislang ungenutztes Potenzial, um die Getreideproduktion weiter zu steigern. Um jedoch das Produktionspotenzial zu mobilisieren, muss zugleich das Exportpotenzial für Weizen erhöht werden. Unter den heutigen Marktbedingungen – mit zum Teil regional entkoppelter Preisentwicklung und hohen Transportkosten – kann das Produktionspotenzial insbesondere Westsibiriens und der Uralregion kaum genutzt werden. Die Mobilisierung des Getreideexportpotenzials erfordert insofern eine Verbesserung der Funktionsfähigkeit des russischen Getreidemarkts. Es sind nicht nur umfassende Investitionen in die Transportinfrastruktur notwendig, sondern auch die Entwicklung von Warenterminmärkten zur Reduzierung des Preisrisikos und der Ausbau von Marktinformationssystemen zur Verbesserung der Markttransparenz

Clusteranalyse als Instrument zur Identifizierung von Geschäftsmodellen am Beispiel von Landes- und Kantonalbanken

Angehalten von der Frage, inwieweit die schweizerischen Kantonalbanken als geschäftspolitisches Vorbild für die deutschen Landesbanken dienen können, umfasst der Beitrag zwei ineinandergreifende Analysebereiche: Im ersten Schritt wird das Geschäftsmodell beider Bankengruppen unter Bezugnahme der nationalen Rahmenbedingungen, der zentralen Charakteristika und (gesetzlichen) Alleinstellungsmerkmale dezidiert erfasst, deskriptiv-statistisch eingeordnet und auf Basis der referenzwert-gestützten Clusterverfahren analysiert. Um ein umfassendes, geschlossenes Bild zu erhalten, werden anschließend beide Bankengruppen einem ausführlichen Performance-Vergleich unter Nutzung einer adjustierten Cost-Income-Ratio unterzogen. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Kantonalbanken trotz ähnlicher Aufgaben wesentlich stärker im klassischen einlagenbasierten Kreditgeschäft aktiv sind – einem Geschäftsbereich der im deutschen öffentlichen Bankensektor jedoch bereits originär durch die lokalen Sparkassen abgedeckt wird und nur subsidiär durch die Landesbanken zu bedienen ist

Modeling the spatial distribution of grazing intensity in Kazakhstan

<div><p>With increasing affluence in many developing countries, the demand for livestock products is rising and the increasing feed requirement contributes to pressure on land resources for food and energy production. However, there is currently a knowledge gap in our ability to assess the extent and intensity of the utilization of land by livestock, which is the single largest land use in the world. We developed a spatial model that combines fine-scale livestock numbers with their associated energy requirements to distribute livestock grazing demand onto a map of energy supply, with the aim of estimating where and to what degree pasture is being utilized. We applied our model to Kazakhstan, which contains large grassland areas that historically have been used for extensive livestock production but for which the current extent, and thus the potential for increasing livestock production, is unknown. We measured the grazing demand of Kazakh livestock in 2015 at 286 Petajoules, which was 25% of the estimated maximum sustainable energy supply that is available to livestock for grazing. The model resulted in a grazed area of 1.22 million km², or 48% of the area theoretically available for grazing in Kazakhstan, with most utilized land grazed at low intensities (average off-take rate was 13% of total biomass energy production). Under a conservative scenario, our estimations showed a production potential of 0.13 million tons of beef additional to 2015 production (31% increase), and much more with utilization of distant pastures. This model is an important step forward in evaluating pasture use and available land resources, and can be adapted at any spatial scale for any region in the world.</p></div

Dynamics of soil organic carbon in the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan under past and future climate and land use

Changes in land use and climate are the main drivers of change in soil organic matter contents. We investigated the impact of the largest policy-induced land conversion to arable land, the Virgin Lands Campaign (VLC), from 1954 to 1963, of the massive cropland abandonment after 1990 and of climate change on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan. We simulated carbon budgets from the pre-VLC period (1900) until 2100 using a dynamic vegetation model to assess the impacts of observed land-use change as well as future climate and land-use change scenarios. The simulations suggest for the entire VLC region (266 million hectares) that the historic cropland expansion resulted in emissions of 1.6⋅ 1015 g (= 1.6 Pg) carbon between 1950 and 1965 compared to 0.6 Pg in a scenario without the expansion. From 1990 to 2100, climate change alone is projected to cause emissions of about 1.8 (± 1.1) Pg carbon. Hypothetical recultivation of the cropland that has been abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union until 2050 may cause emissions of 3.5 (± 0.9) Pg carbon until 2100, whereas the abandonment of all cropland until 2050 would lead to sequestration of 1.8 (± 1.2) Pg carbon. For the climate scenarios based on SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) emission pathways, SOC declined only moderately for constant land use but substantially with further cropland expansion. The variation of SOC in response to the climate scenarios was smaller than that in response to the land-use scenarios. This suggests that the effects of land-use change on SOC dynamics may become as relevant as those of future climate change in the Eurasian steppes

Declining human pressure and opportunities for rewilding in the steppes of Eurasia

Large and ecologically functioning steppe complexes have been lost historically across the globe, but recent land‐use changes may allow the reversal of this trend in some regions. We aimed to develop and map indicators of changing human influence using satellite imagery and historical maps, and to use these indicators to identify areas for broad‐scale steppe rewilding.Peer Reviewe

Large greenhouse gas savings due to changes in the post-Soviet food systems

As the global food system contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, understanding the sources of GHG emissions embodied in different components of food systems is important. The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered a massive restructuring of the domestic food systems, namely declining consumption of animal products, cropland abandonment, and a major restructuring of agricultural trade. However, how these complex changes have affected global GHG emissions is uncertain. Here, we quantified the net GHG emissions associated with changes in the former Soviet Union's food systems. Changes in food production, consumption, and trade together resulted in a net emissions reduction of 7.61 Gt carbon dioxide equivalents from 1992 to 2011. For comparison, this corresponds to one quarter of the CO2 emissions from deforestation in Latin America from 1991 to 2011. The key drivers of the emissions reductions were the decreasing beef consumption in the 1990s, increasing beef imports after 2000, mainly from South America, and carbon sequestration in soils on abandoned cropland. Ongoing transformations of the food systems in the former Soviet Union, however, suggest emissions will likely rebound. The results highlight the importance of considering agricultural production, land-use change, trade, and consumption when assessing countries emissions portfolios. Moreover, we demonstrated how emissions reductions that originate from a reduction in the extent and intensity of agricultural production can be compromised by increasing emissions embodied in rising imports of agricultural commodities.Volkswagen Foundation (BALTRAK)the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) (GERUKA)The Swedish Research Council FormasThe Russian Foundation for Basic ResearchRussian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal UniversityEuropean Research Council (ERC)Peer Reviewe

Spatial distribution of arable and abandoned land across former Soviet Union countries

Knowledge of the spatial distribution of agricultural abandonment following the collapse of the Soviet Union is highly uncertain. To help improve this situation, we have developed a new map of arable and abandoned land for 2010 at a 10 arc-second resolution. We have fused together existing land cover and land use maps at different temporal and spatial scales for the former Soviet Union (fSU) using a training data set collected from visual interpretation of very high resolution (VHR) imagery. We have also collected an independent validation data set to assess the map accuracy. The overall accuracies of the map by region and country, i.e. Caucasus, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation and Ukraine, are 90±2%, 84±2%, 92±1%, 78±3%, 95±1%, 83±2%, respectively. This new product can be used for numerous applications including the modelling of biogeochemical cycles, land-use modelling, the assessment of trade-offs between ecosystem services and land-use potentials (e.g., agricultural production), among others