http://www.energybulletin.net/43491.htmlThe inability to feed their people stands as the Soviet Union’s most striking failure. In just a couple of generations, a country that was the breadbasket of Europe had been turned into Europe’s agricultural basket case, so that by the time the Soviet Union collapsed it was financially and politically hamstrung by its need to obtain grain import credits from countries that were hostile to its interests. In the 1970s, an oil boom made it complacent, but when the boom ended and oil prices collapsed it was left with no room to maneuver. Its oil provinces reached their all-time peak of production in the mid-80s; consequently, it was unable to further ramp up production and boost exports.
How does a country with more arable land than just about any other, an ancient and successful agricultural tradition complete with all-you-can-eat food festivals and a history of grain surpluses, produce such a dismal result? A short excursion into Russian history might be instructive here: small mishaps can be produced accidentally, but disasters on this scale take serious effort. Speaking of agricultural disasters as a class, it is worth noting at the outset that agriculture is seriously dull work, best done by decidedly simple people who do not mind bending down to touch the ground all day until they look like hunchbacks. Almost genetically predisposed to growing food, these hunchbacks are to be found in all traditional farming societies the world over. As they toil, they wear out the soil very slowly or, if they are not too stressed, and just a bit clever, not at all. In return for their humble servitude, they stay in daily and direct contact with nature in all of its fickle bounty, remaining part of it. As long as they do not resort to shortcuts, such as relying on just one plant, be it maize or potato, their numbers fluctuate naturally along with the climate. But try replacing the humble hunchback with a university-trained agronomist, her hoe with a tractor, her bag of heirloom seeds with some mass-produced hybrid and rainfall with an irrigation pump, and you soon find yourself on the road to environmental oblivion. While Russian agriculture presents us with a particularly frightening example, let us not discount American efforts in the same direction: with enough effort at subjugating nature, through chemical farming, genetic manipulation, pumping down non-replenishing aquifers, ethanol production and other weapons of mass desertification, anything is achievable, even starvation, right here in the US.
Up to the middle of the 19th century, the Russian empire operated something vaguely analogous to the plantation system in the old South, with an ever more distant, French-speaking nobility presiding over a multitude of illiterate, Russian-speaking serfs. Based on a more humane serfdom rather than outright slavery, it bound peasants to the land, giving the landowner control over its use and nominal responsibility for their welfare. As the 19th century wore on, the imperial throne found the perpetuation of serfdom increasingly embarrassing to its international prestige as a leading European power, and so, in 1861, less than a month before the outbreak of the American Civil War, serfdom was abolished by imperial decree, without any bloodshed and without any serious detriment to agricultural production. Some peasants were gradually able to acquire their own land, and by the early 20th century the more fertile parts of Russia and the Ukraine had many prosperous farming families. Pre-Revolutionary Russia was, by all accounts, a well-fed place.
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