The 1931 Grain Harvest

Abstract

About 40 per cent of all grain was sown in the autumn: virtually all the rye, about one third of the wheat and a small amount of barley. These grains germinated during the winter and were harvested in the following summer, shortly before the spring-sown grain. The yield per hectare of autumn-sown wheat is generally higher. But wheat is a less hardy crop than rye, and autumn sowing tended to be confined to the warmer regions of Ukraine, North Caucasus and the Central Black-Earth region — as well as the whole of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Rye predominated in the northern regions and was responsible for some 70 per cent of autumn sowings. The central authorities were less interested in rye, which was traditionally a peasant subsistence crop, and concentrated their attention on the south, where the more commercially significant winter wheat predominated in the autumn sowings. Autumn-sown wheat was liable to perish if an early thaw was followed by a late frost. These ‘winter killings’ of the autumn-sown wheat were a major problem in Ukraine in the winters of 1927–8 and 1928–9 (see vol. 1, pp. 42, 63, 104).