To what extent can the Russian war in Ukraine be seen as an attempt to resolve a food crisis?

Question

The history of Stalin's rule is notorious for the oppression of large sections of the Soviet peasantry, who were executed in their hundreds of thousands, as the expropriation of grain supplies to the large cities was enforced. This included the fertile lands of "The Ukraine".

Boris Pasternak's Dr Zhivago (1958) is a novel whose events mostly take place during the Civil War and the period immediately following the 1917 Revolution. Pasternak writes about Siberia and trains loaded with produce heading for Moscow and St. Petersburg. Anything worth having in the Volga and Urals regions was unavailable, simply because it had been shipped westward.

A perennial Russian issue has been the shortage of arable land in relation to the size of the population. Under centuries of Romanov rule, widespread famine had led to increasingly severe measures being taken against inefficient peasant farming, both before and after the abolition of serfdom in 1861.

In chapter one of his Russia: The Tsarist and Soviet Legacy (1996) Edward Acton says:

At the end of the Soviet period, only just over one-tenth of the territory under Moscow's rule was actively cultivated, while two thirds were unfit for farming of any kind, and over half was virtually uninhabitable. Even on the best land , agriculture is handicapped by adverse climatic conditions. The richest soil, that of the so-called 'black earth' region which stretches from the south-west into Siberia, suffers from recurrent drought during the growing season and yields are further devastated by thunderstorms and hailstorms in the harvest season.

Dystopian forecasts have long predicted wars for resources - oil, water, food etc. And Russian military policy seems overwhelmingly to control the Black Sea ports. Now Ukrainian grain is disappearing into Russia. One is tempted to wonder how much of Putin's motive in this war has been brought about by long-term forecasts of food shortages, exacerbated by the loss of the Baltic states.

Are there ways in which the current policies can be seen as a continuation of Russia's inherent problem, as a largely landlocked country (making large scale importation difficult), to produce enough food for its population?

Answer 1

Securing the food supply of the population is not a problem for Russia. The Russian agricultural industry does pretty well. While it did decline a lot shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its net output is steadily improving and has now bounced back. Until the recent sanctions, Russia was a very important net exporter of several agricultural products.

Further, Russia is expected to be one of the few countries whose agricultural industry will actually benefit from global warming. While large parts of Africa, the Americas and the Middle East become less and less arable, the north of Russia is actually expected to become much more suitable for farming in the near future.

Answer 2

It's also incorrect to claim Russia was a food importer during the latter Romanov times:

If Russia as a food importer is the old story, a new development has occurred that makes this book relevant. Twenty years ago, Russia’s agricultural recovery was only beginning and the country was not a significant food exporter. In recent years, Russia has returned to its historical role as a major food exporter. During 1909–1913, for example, Russia was Europe’s largest grain exporter, and its grain exports accounted for 30 percent of the world’s grain exports.

Food deficits in Russia/USSR had more to do with appallingly bad management than "lack of arable land".

Also, before the war, Russia wasn't anticipating any food shortage, rather it expected its food exports to increase substantially in the upcoming years.

The Ministry of Agriculture claims that Russia exported its grain to 138 nations in the world in 2020. Russia’s rise to significance has been rapid in recent years, leading President Vladimir Putin in 2018 to decree that the dollar value of food exports should reach $45 billion USD by 2024. [...]

A general increase in the dollar value of Russia’s food exports has occurred since 2000, [...] and this trend is expected to continue. Data from the Russia’s Ministry of Agriculture show that in 2020 Russia’s agri-food exports equalled $28.9 billion USD, a 18 percent increase over the same period in 2019. Grain exports accounted for $9.7 billion USD; fish and seafood exports were second at $5.2 billion USD; oilseed was in third place at $4.6 billion USD; and processed foods were in fourth place at $4.1 billion USD. Currently about 6 percent of Russia poultry meat and pork production is exported, but Andrei Dal’nov, an analyst at Rossel’khozbank, believes that meat exports will reach 10 percent of output. [...] In 2020, China was the single largest importer of Russia’s agri-food products.

---

If you really want to argue (per comment) that Russia doesn't have enough arable land without Ukraine, Wikipedia seems to disagree. These are 2013 figures derived from FAO (not immediately possible to recheck them due to a DB change).

Arable land (hectares per person)
Russian Federation  0.852
Ukraine             0.715
United States       0.480
France              0.277
India               0.123
China               0.078

A reason I've included France there is that they had managed to be a significant exporter e.g. of wheat, although in recent times (2020) the French has been complaining that they were being displaced by Russia even in their traditional export markets (Algeria, etc.)

---

This can hardly be considered a major reason for the 2022 invasion, but Russia does claim that Ukraine cutting/reducing fresh water supply to Crimea (after 2014) resulted in loss of irrigate/fertile lands:

Irrigated land totaled around 140,000 hectares in 2013 but dropped to 10,000 in 2015, just a year after the occupation. According to Russian sources, it slightly rebounded to 17,000 hectares in 2018. And despite prioritizing increasing the share of irrigated land, the peninsula is said to be losing 14 billion rubles ($210 million) annually due to low water supplies, according to the Crimean Ministry of Agriculture.

And one of the first victories claimed by Moscow on Feb 26 was that it secured (and reopened) a major canal supplying fresh water to Crimea.

The canal was built in 1975 to provide water primarily for agriculture and industry. After Russia took control of Crimea in 2014, Russian officials took over the canal facilities, which had been owned and operated by the State Water Resources Agency of Ukraine. Ukrainian officials reported that the Russian authorities did not pay for water delivery, and subsequently Ukraine dammed up the canal.

A 2015 study in a Russian journal reports that 85% of the water in Crimea came via the canal, of which 72% was used for agriculture, 10% for industry, and 18% for drinking water and other public needs.

Russia has some 121 million hectares of arable land (Wikipedia), so those approx. 120,000 hectares in Crimea (temporarily) lost to lack of irrigation were about 0.1%, in the big picture, although I'm sure the locals felt the effects more.

Answer 3

Are there ways in which the current policies can be seen as a continuation of Russia's inherent problem, as a largely landlocked country

This is a resounding No.

Russia is not a land-locked country by any definition of the word. In fact it has ports with access to both the Pacific Ocean (directly) and the Atlantic Ocean (by the way of the Bosporus Straight and the Mediterranean Sea) and through the Baltic Sea.

RF's Navy, before the start of the war of 2022, had 3 groups led by Atlant-class(aka Slava-class) missile cruisers - The Black Sea Fleet, the Pacific Fleet, and the Baltic Fleet.

Even without a single inch of Ukraine (no Crimea, no Odessa, or any other legally-Ukrainian territory), RF has multiple commercial ports connecting it to both Atlantic and Pacific trade routes.

It has a Sea of Azov port, a Black Sea port in Novorossyisk (pictured below), which connect to the Atlantic Ocean, and Baltic Sea ports, also connecting it to the Atlantic Ocean, and it has multiple Pacific Ocean ports.

The Black Sea port and the Sea of Azov ports are warm-water ports.

Further, after the collapse and the dissolution of the USSR, the country of the Russian Federation inherited slightly less than 1/2 of the people of the USSR and slightly more than 70% of the land mass of the USSR. So its ability to feed its own population has only improved. RF's population of 144million has more than enough adequate access to food-producing areas.

Answer 4

I think a more general question would be, whether there are structural reasons for this conflict. There's a lot more in play than arable lands:

• preferential access to the mineral-rich Donbass region
• Access to the Black (and then Mediterranean) sea for military and commercial fleet
• Well developed military base in Crimea
• Access to the Ukrainian internal market (for selling goods)
• Control of the gas shipments going through the Ukrainian territory
• Share in the European gas market

One can see how Russia, European Union, and the United States have different and sometimes conflicting interests in all of the above. One can also see how they have been in a conflict well before it became a military one (although does not justify the latter.)

Remark: by structural reasons I mean the ones that are determined by geography, economy, etc , but independent of the specific personalities. Thus, even if Putin were not the president of Russia, Crimea and Donbass still would represent an interest to it.

Answer 5

Despite the dirty truth that Russia is robbing food, stealing possessions (e.g. evidence of a refrigerator). However, I do not think that is the real purpose of Russia. Putin wants to take over Ukraine completely. Because it's like China for Southeast Asian countries. China and Russia have a very large area, are both great powers, but have almost no sea. And everyone knows that the Sea is easy to expand and exploit, bringing benefits to resources, transportation, military,... The war in Ukraine is an important symbol of what the world will become. I don't think Putin is afraid that the Russians will be short of food in the future. This would be unlikely since Russia itself is rich in resources, and exports wheat. And more simply, I don't think Putin cares for Russian life.

Answer 6

National appropriation of neighboring countries' food supplies, in times of major starvation, is history in the making. Thus, in food crises, that cannot successfully be dealt with through state diplomacy, attacks on prosperous neighboring countries do happen. The best example is the Vikings, who went on raids in neighboring countries to steal food. The Vikings carried out raids in both the UK and Ukraine. The British were completely routed by the Vikings. But eventually managed to rebel and turn the situation around. The settler farmers in pre-Ukraine were not as successful. The Vikings founded Kievan Rus', with Kiev as capital. And the Vikings ruled over the Ukrainian population until they were ousted by the Mongols. Subsequently Lithuania, Poland, and last Russia reigned over Ukraine. In 1991 Russia transferred control of Ukraine over to the local population.

Leaving now the tedious history about illegal food grabbing, to focus on potential shortfall in agricultural resources in today’s Russia. According to this article in TASS, Russia is completely self sufficient in grain production.

And regarding natural resources, according to this article in Investopedia, Russia is the richest country in the world, worth $71 Trillion, which is notably bigger than the runner up, the United States, at $45 Trillion. So, it is difficult to think that Russia’s motive for invading Ukraine would be to grab its resources and become even richer.

Consequently, Russia is the biggest country in the world, with the most resources and would hardly be in need of more. No, the real reason for the invasion of Ukraine has to be what they have stated all along: Protection against militant russophobic enemies; people who are hostile to Russians in East Ukraine, and to Russia in general.