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

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 CO 2 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 nonclimatic factors and is likely to have significant impact on both global and regional food security over the coming decades.

Using multiple remote sensing perspectives to identify and attribute land surface dynamics in Central Asia 2001–2013

“…Besides cropland abandonment, the region has also been affected by a partial rehabilitation of grasslands as a result of declining livestock numbers since 1990 (Karnieli et al, 2008). Climate change is expected to change the water availability with declining summer precipitation and potentially increasing winter precipitation (Lioubimtseva, de Beurs, & Henebry, 2013;Lioubimtseva & Henebry, 2009;Lioubimtseva, Kariyeva, & Henebry, 2014), which could significantly affect the precipitation sensitive vegetation in Central Asia (Gessner et al, 2013) as well as available water bodies (Klein et al, 2014), and has the potential to lead to crossborder water disputes Groll, Opp, Kulmatov, Ikramova, & Normatov, 2015). However, the simulated precipitation in climate projections for this region remains highly uncertain in recent rounds of climate model intercomparisons (IPCC, 2013).…”

Large scale climate oscillation impacts on temperature, precipitation and land surface phenology in Central Asia

“…The land surface of Central Asia has experienced tremendous changes over the last three decades both as a result of human impacts and due to a changing and variable climate. The predominant human driven change was the fundamental transformation of agricultural systems across large swaths of the land surface as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union between 1991 and 2000 (de Beurs et al 2015, Lioubimtseva et al 2015, de Beurs andHenebry 2004), followed by a period of recovery , Lioubimtseva et al 2013. The area is still affected by land degradation as a result of abandonment in some areas (Tüshaus et al 2014), as well as a result of salinization in other regions (Sommer et al 2013).…”

Cyanobacteria From Brazilian Extreme Environments

“…Understanding impacts of climate change on the future productivity of this region is essential for predicting its potential as a major grain supplier in the future. The recent growth in grain exports from the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Kazakhstan has been driven by a combination of multiple factors, including structural changes in their agricultural sectors, economic recovery of the region after the deep decline of the 1990s, and relatively favourable weather conditions (Liefert et al, 2013;Lioubimtseva et al, 2013;Dronin and Kirilenko, 2013). Several studies based on coupling climate and crop models indicate that the agro-ecological potential of the grainproducing zone of Central Eurasia may increase due to warmer temperatures, longer growing seasons, decrease of frosts and positive impact of higher atmospheric concentrations of CO 2 on crops (Pegov, 2000;, while other modelling experiments project the decline of agricultural potential due to increasing frequency of droughts Dronin and Kirilenko, 2008).…”

“…Section 2 examines structural changes in the agriculture sectors of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Kazakhstan that have led to changing their role from net importers to major net exporters of grain. There is a general consensus that dramatic economic and policy changes over the past few decades have had a significantly higher impact on grain production than climate variability and change (Liefert et al, 2013;Lioubimtseva et al, 2013), although socioeconomic and biophysical changes may overlap, partly masking each other's effects (Dronin and Kirilenko, 2013). This section discusses the turning points in the changing trends of this region's arable area, productivity, and exports of the major cereal crops.…”