Increasing crop production in Russia and Ukraine—regional and global impacts from intensification and recultivation

Abstract

Russia and Ukraine are countries with relatively large untapped agricultural potentials, both in terms of abandoned agricultural land and substantial yield gaps. Here we present a comprehensive assessment of Russian and Ukrainian crop production potentials and we analyze possible impacts of their future utilization, on a regional as well as global scale. To this end, the total amount of available abandoned land and potential yields in Russia and Ukraine are estimated and explicitly implemented in an economic agricultural sector model. We find that cereal (barley, corn, and wheat) production in Russia and Ukraine could increase by up to 64% in 2030 to 267 million tons, compared to a baseline scenario. Oilseeds (rapeseed, soybean, and sunflower) production could increase by 84% to 50 million tons, respectively. In comparison to the baseline, common net exports of Ukraine and Russia could increase by up to 86.3 million tons of cereals and 18.9 million tons of oilseeds in 2030, representing 4% and 3.6% of the global production of these crops, respectively. Furthermore, we find that production potentials due to intensification are ten times larger than potentials due to recultivation of abandoned land. Consequently, we also find stronger impacts from intensification at the global scale. A utilization of crop production potentials in Russia and Ukraine could globally save up to 21 million hectares of cropland and reduce average global crop prices by more than 3%.

Yield Variability and Harvest Failures in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan and Their Possible Impact on Food Security in the Middle East and North Africa

“…Moreover, this could help to realise additional RUK crop production potentials (Schierhorn et al , ; Ryabchenko and Nonhebel, ; Saraykin et al , ; Swinnen et al , ), which implies that RUK countries could well outperform the production and export projections of the OECD‐FAO () by 2027. This, in turn, could lead to decreases in average global crop prices (Deppermann et al , ) and hence further benefit food security in net importing countries. In this respect, the Russian and Kazakh governments recently initiated several reforms to direct agricultural policy support towards the stimulation of farm investment and technical modernisation of agriculture, in the case of Russia including subsidised short‐term and investment loans (OECD, ).…”

The problems of soy market development in the far east and the ways of their solutions

“…Currently, the soybean market is at the stage of formation, while demonstrating a high growth dynamics. The Russian soybean market is increasingly dependent on the world market due to the expansion of the participation of Russian companies in the world trade in this product, which should be taken into account when studying the prospects for its development (Deppermann et al 2018).…”

“…In recent years, research has seen an increase in interest in Russia, its role in world agricultural markets. It is noted that Russia is a country with large untapped agricultural potential, the use of which will significantly save arable land and reduce the average world prices for products (Deppermann et al 2018).…”

The Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison phase 1 simulation dataset

“…Site-based models have typically been calibrated at field-scale level in previous model applications. Some of the site-based models were also calibrated at national scale, especially those EPIC models used to provide data to global or national economic analyses (EPIC-BOKU 62,120,121 , EPIC-IIASA 122 ). Ecosystem models were either calibrated at national scale (LPJmL, PEGASUS) or not at all.…”