Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Grain Production Trends in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan in the Context of the Global Climate Variability and Change

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Climate Change and Water Resources

Part of the book series: The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry ((HEC,volume 25))

Abstract

Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan are the three major grain producers in Central Eurasia. In the context of the current food-price crisis, these countries might be presented with a window of opportunity to reemerge as the major grain exporters if they succeed in increasing their productivity. Global grain production is highly sensitive to a combination of internal and external factors, such as institutional changes, land-use changes, climate variability, water resources, and global economic trends. Agroecological scenarios driven by climate models suggest that land suitability in this region is likely to change in future, due to impacts of climate change, such as CO2 fertilization, changes in the growing season, temperature, precipitation, frequency, and timing of droughts and frosts. Grain production in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan grew steadily between 2002 and 2010 following a 10-year long depression caused by collapse of the USSR. However, in the summer of 2010 Russia and its neighbors experienced an unprecedented heat wave, accompanied by severe wild fires. As news of this disaster became known international grain prices increased dramatically. The future of grain production in this region will be determined by the interplay of climatic variability and multiple non-climatic factors and is likely to have significant impact on both global and regional food security over the coming decades.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Rosset P (2008) Food sovereignty and the contemporary food crisis. Development 51:460–463. doi:10.1057/dev.2008.48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Koester U, Brümmer B (2006) Institutional changes for agricultural and rural development in the CEEC and CIS region. Electron J Agric Dev Econ 2(2):144–179

    Google Scholar 

  3. Dronin N, Kirilenko A (2008) Climate change and food stress in Russia: what if the market transforms as it did during the past century. Climate Change 86(1–2):123–150

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Lioubimtseva E (2010) Global food security and grain production trends in Central Eurasia: do models predict a new window of opportunity? Natl Soc Sci J 41(1):154–165

    Google Scholar 

  5. Lioubimtseva E, Henebry GM (2012) Grain production trends in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan: new opportunities in increasingly unstable world? Front Earth Sci 6(2):157–166. doi:10.1007/s11707-012-0318-y

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Wright CK, de Beurs KM, Henebry GM (2012) Combined analysis of land cover change and NDVI trends in the Northern Eurasian grain belt. Front Earth Sci 6(2):177–187. doi:10.1007/s11707-012-0327-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Henebry GM (2009) Carbon in idle croplands. Nature 457:1089–1090

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Prishchepov AV, Müller D, Dubinin M, Baumann M, Radeloff V (2013) Determinants of agricultural land abandonment in post-Soviet European Russia. Land Use Policy 30:873–884

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Lerman Z, Sedik D, Pugachev N, Goncharuk A (2007) Rethinking agricultural reform in Ukraine. Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, vol 38, IAMO, Halle

    Google Scholar 

  10. Zhang B (1996) Total factor productivity of grain production in the former Soviet Union. J Comp Econ 24:202–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Meng E, Longmire J, Moldashev A (2000) Kazakhstan's wheat system: priorities, constraints, and future prospects. Food Policy 25(6):701–717

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. de Beurs KM, Henebry GM (2004) Land surface phenology, climatic variation, and institutional change: analyzing agricultural land cover change in Kazakhstan. Remote Sens Environ 89:497–509

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Muratova N, Terekhov A (2005) A five-year experience of satellite monitoring agricultural crops in Northern Kazakhstan. Опыт пятилетнего оперативного мониторинга сельскохозяйственных угодий Северного Казахстана с помощью спутниковых данных (in Russian). In: Laverov NP (ed) Actual problems in remote sensing of the Earth from space, vol 2. Institute of Space Research of Russian Federation, Moscow, pp 277–283

    Google Scholar 

  14. Uzun V (2005) Large and small business in Russian agriculture: adaptation to market. Comp Econ Stud 47:85–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Bokusheva R, Hockmann H (2006) Production risk and technical inefficiency in Russian agriculture. Eur Rev Agric Econ 33(1):93–118. doi:10.1093/erae/jbi036

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. FAOSTAT (2012) Food and Agriculture Organization Statistics. http://www.fao.faostat.org. Accessed July 2012

  17. Dole R, Hoerling M, Perlwitz J, Eischeid J, Pegion P, Zhang T, Quan X-W, Xu T, Murray D (2011) Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave? Geophys Res Lett 38:L06702. doi:10.1029/2010GL046582

  18. Welton G (2011) The impact of Russia’s 2010 grain export ban. Oxfam Research Reports. Oxfam, UK. www.oxfam.com/grow

  19. USDA FAS (2010) Effects of the summer fires and droughts and Russian agriculture, GAIN report. USDA Foreign Agriculture Service, Washington, p 5

    Google Scholar 

  20. IPCC (2007) In: Metz B, Davidson OR, Bosch PR, Dave R, Meyer LA (eds) Climate change 2007: mitigation, contribution of working group III to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  21. Wigley TML (2008) MAGICC/SCENGEN 5.3: USER MANUAL (version 2), NCAR, Boulder. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/wigley/magicc/UserMan5.3.v2.pdf. Accessed 14 January 2013

  22. Fischer G, Shah M, van Velthuizen H (2002) Climate change and agricultural vulnerability. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Vienna

    Google Scholar 

  23. Parry ML, Rosenzweig C, Iglesias A, Livermore V, Fischer G (2004) Effects of climate change on global food production under SRES emissions and socio-economic scenarios. Glob Environ Chang 14:53–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Fischer GM, Shah M, Tubiello FN, Van Velhuizen H (2005) Socio-economic and climate change impact on agriculture: an integrated assessment, 1990–2080. Philos Trans R Soc B 360:2067–2083

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Schmidhuber J, Tubiello F (2007) Global food security under climate change. Proc Natl Acad Sci 104(50):19703–19708

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Pegov SA, Khomyakov DM, Khomyakov PM (2000) Vliyanie globalnih izmenenii klimata na socialnoeconomicheskoye polozeniye Rossii (Global change impacts on the socio-economic situation in Russia). In: Kotlyakov VM (ed) Globalniye I regionalnye izmeneniya klimata i ikh prirodniye i socialnoeconomicheskiye posledstviya (Global and regional climate change and its environmental and socio-economic impacts). Geos, Moscow (in Russian)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Mendelsohn R, Morison W, Schlesinger ME, Andronova NG (2000) Country-specific market impact of climate change. Clim Chang 45(3–4):553–569

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Alcamo J, Dronin N, Endejan M, Golubev G, Kirilenko A (2007) A new assessment of climate change impacts on food production shortfalls and water availability in Russia. Glob Environ Chang 17(3–4):429–444

    Google Scholar 

  29. Golubev G, Dronin N (2004) Geography of droughts and food problems in Russia (1900–2000). Report of the International project on global environmental change and its threat to food and water security in Russia. Center for Environmental Systems Research, Kassel

    Google Scholar 

  30. Lioubimtseva E, Henebry GM (2009) Potential impact of climate change on the grain productivity in Central Eurasia: human vulnerability and adaptations. In: Nickolova N (ed) Global changes: vulnerability, mitigation, and adaptation. Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, Sofia, pp 22–27

    Google Scholar 

  31. Lioubimtseva E, Henebry GM (2009) Climate and environmental change in arid Central Asia: impacts, vulnerability, and adaptations. J Arid Environ 73(11):963–977

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Ioffe G, Nefedova T, de Beurs KM (2012) Land abandonment in Russia: the case of two oblasts. Eurasian Geogr Econ 53(4):527–549. doi:10.2747/1539-7216.53.4.527

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. USDA FAS (2010b) USDA foreign agricultural service. http://www.fas.usda.gov/. Accessed January 2013

  34. Friedl MA, Sulla-Menashe D, Tan B et al (2010) MODIS Collection 5 global landcover: algorithm refinements and characterization of new datasets. Remote Sens Environ 114:168–182

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Morisette JT, Richardson AD, Knapp AK, Fisher JI, Graham E, Abatzoglou J, Wilson BE, Breshears DD, Henebry GM, Hanes JM, Liang L (2008) Unlocking the rhythm of the seasons in the face of global change: challenges and opportunities for phenological research in the 21st Century. Front Ecol Environ 5(7):253–260. doi:10.1890/070217

    Google Scholar 

  36. de Beurs KM, Henebry GM (2005) A statistical framework for the analysis of long image time series. Int J Remote Sens 26(8):1551–1573

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. de Beurs KM, Henebry GM (2008) Northern Annular Mode effects on the land surface phenologies of Northern Eurasia. J Climate 21:4257–4279

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. de Beurs KM, Wright CK, Henebry GM (2009) Dual scale trend analysis distinguishes climatic from anthropogenic effects on the vegetated land surface. Environ Res Lett 4:045012

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. de Beurs KM, Ioffe G, Nefedova TG (2012) Agricultural change in the Russian grain belt: a case study of Samara oblast. Geogr Environ Sustain 5(2):95–110

    Google Scholar 

  40. OECD-FAO (2011) OECD-FAO agricultural outlook 2008–2017. OECD, Paris, p 230

    Google Scholar 

  41. EBRD-FAO (2008) Grain production and export potential in CIS countries. Fighting food inflation through sustainable investment. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development/Food and Agriculture Organization, London

    Google Scholar 

  42. Koester U, Striewe L (1998) Huge potential, huge losses – the search for ways out of the dilemma of Ukrainian agriculture. In: Siedenberg A, Hoffmann L (eds) Ukraine at the crossroads: economic reforms in international perspective. Physica, Heidelberg, pp 259–270

    Google Scholar 

  43. Serova EV (2000) Russia’s agro-food sector: state of the art. In: Wehrheim P, Frohberg K, Serova E, Von Braun J (eds) Russia's agro-food sector: towards truly functioning markets. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, pp 81–106

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  44. Liefert WM, Liefert O, Serova E (2009) Russia's transition to major player in world agricultural markets. Choices 24(2), http://www.choicesmagazine.org/magazine/article.php?article=78. Accessed January 2013

  45. Lissitsa A, Odening M (2005) Efficiency and total factor productivity in Ukrainian agriculture in transition. Agric Econ 32(3):311–325

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Castells M (1999) End of millenium. Blackwell, Malden

    Google Scholar 

  47. Leichenko RM, O’Brien KL (2002) The dynamics of rural vulnerability to global change: the case of southern Africa. Mitigation Adap Strat Global Climate Change 7:1–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Almaganbetov N (2005) The impact of land reforms on economic development of Kazakhstan. The Center for Policy Studies, Central European University/Open Society Institute, Budapest

    Google Scholar 

  49. Sedik D, Trueblood M, Arnade C (2002) Corporate farm performance in Russia, 1991–95: an efficiency analysis. J Comp Econ 27(3):514–533

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. WHO (2009) World Health Organization Databases. http://www.who.org. Accessed January 2013

  51. World Bank (2009) The World Bank Data. http://www.worldbank.org. Accessed January 2013

  52. Dudwik N, Fock K (2007) Land reform and farm restructuring in transition countries: the experience of Bulgaria, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. World Bank, Washington

    Book  Google Scholar 

  53. Sedik D (2004) Missing pillars: the failures of rural finance in Ukraine. In: Macey DAJ, Pyle W, Wegren SK (eds) Building market institutions in post-communist agriculture: land, credit, and assistance. Lexington Books, Lanham

    Google Scholar 

  54. Wehrheim P, Wiesmann D (2006) Food security analysis and policies for transition countries. J Agric Dev Econ 3(2):112–143

    Google Scholar 

  55. Baydildina A, Akshinbay A, Bayetova M, Mkrytichyan L, Haliepesova A, Ataev D (2000) Agricultural policy reforms and food security in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Food Policy 25(6):733–747

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. IKAR (2010) Institute for Agricultural Market Studies. http://www.ikar.ru/eng/. Accessed January 2010

  57. USDA (2009) Global crop production review. USDA’s Joint Agricultural Weather Facility. http://www.usda.gov/oce/weather/pubs/. Accessed December 2009

  58. Tebaldi C, Hayhoe K, Arblaster JM, Meehl GA (2006) Going to the extremes: an intercomparison of model-simulated historical and future changes in extreme events. Clim Chang 79:185–211

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Long SP, Ainsworth EA, Leakey ADB, Nösberger J, Ort DA (2006) Food for thought: lower-than-expected crop yield stimulation with rising CO2 concentrations. Science 312(5782):1918–1921. doi:10.1126/science.1114722

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the NASA LCLUC program as part of the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI; http://neespi.org) through projects NNG06GC22G to G.M. Henebry, W.J. Capehart, and E. Lioubimtseva and NNX09AI29G to K.M. de Beurs, G. Ioffe, and G.M. Henebry. We would like to thank P. de Beurs for the application development that allowed us to calculate the Seasonal Kendall tests efficiently.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geography and Planning Department, Grand Valley State University, 1 Campus Drive, Mackinac Hall B-4-202, Allendale, MI, 49401, USA

    Elena Lioubimtseva

  2. Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, The University of Oklahoma, 100 East Boyd St., SEC Suite 566, Norman, OK, 73019, USA

    Kirsten M. de Beurs

  3. Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence (GIScCE), South Dakota State University, 1021 Medary Ave., Wecota Hall 506B, Brookings, SD, 57007, USA

    Geoffrey M. Henebry

Authors
  1. Elena Lioubimtseva
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kirsten M. de Beurs
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Geoffrey M. Henebry
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elena Lioubimtseva .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Plymouth Street 2502, Blacksburg, 24060-8256, Virginia, USA

    Tamim Younos

  2. Center Street 1422, Lafayette, 47905, Indiana, USA

    Caitlin A. Grady

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Lioubimtseva, E., de Beurs, K.M., Henebry, G.M. (2013). Grain Production Trends in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan in the Context of the Global Climate Variability and Change. In: Younos, T., Grady, C. (eds) Climate Change and Water Resources. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 25. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2013_225

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation