The history of Russian agriculture teaches us that there will be no starting from scratch. Our research took us back to the Stolypin reforms4 that privatised feudal land-holdings and led to the 1917 revolution. We investigated the Soviet five year plans that forced predetermined reaping patterns5 on the Eurasian landscape and led to mass starvation in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In a meeting with Dmitry Patrushev, the Minister for Agriculture of Moscow Region, we learned about current government incentives to develop vast abandoned growing sites that are surprisingly close to Russia’s largest city. We visited Veretyevo, an agri-tourism operation near Moscow that builds pleasant and productive landforms together.
Just like in other landed states, low capital investment monocultures like wheat, meat and dairy are still standard practice in Russia. Sanctions in 2014 cut off much of the foreign supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, which hold a special luxuriant status in the frigid nation. The following year, a 31 hectare greenhouse complex, Ivanovo, was built on the outskirts of Moscow at a cost of $500 million US dollars. It grows only one crop – cucumbers. They grow quickly and predictably with artificial lighting and climate control, monitored intensively around the clock and throughout all seasons. Agricultural interiors such as these are becoming standard fixtures of European landscapes, and Ivanovo is largely made up of Dutch-built and designed equipment.
“Stolypin wanted to reform agriculture in order to modernise Russia and make it more competitive with other European powers. He hoped that reorganising the land would increase support for the Tsar among unskilled farmhands. This would reduce the threat of the Social Revolutionaries. Stolypin believed the key to success was to increase the number of peasant landowners, which would result in a more invested peasantry.” Source: Attempts to Strengthen Tsarism, 1905-1914, BBC. ←
“The first five-year plan [or Pyatiletka in Russian] was created by Stalin in 1928. In a speech to factory workers in 1931, he made his reasons clear, saying that Russia was ‘fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.’” Source: Of Russian origin: Pyatiletka, Russiapedia. ←