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Soviet agriculture, unlike Soviet industry, has not recovered to its prewar level, even though growing weather has been good since the 1946 drought. Soviet propaganda plugs the theme that Russia is a land of oceanic wheatfields and of modern collective farms. Actually, in relation to its population, Russia is a poor country agriculturally. With a third more people than the U.S., Russia has slightly less arable land than the U.S., produces only half as much grain. Since 1895, Russia has had a drought once every five years on the average, reducing crops as much as 25%.
Dr. Naum Jasny, author of last year's massive Socialized Agriculture of the U.S.S.R., has demonstrated how geography and climate greatly limit Russian agriculture. Corn is barred to all of north and central Russia by the cold, to most of the south by lack of rainfall. The Russian soil, starting at the city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga and proceeding northwest, is at first semidesert, then improves to chestnut soil (dark brown soil), then to rich chernozem (fertile black soil), and finally declines to thin podsols (grey, leached, acid soil) — see map. Russia's huge long swatch of chernozem is the biggest in the world, but most of it lies north of the latitude of Bangor, Me. (45th parallel) which means that its yield is much lower than the same type of land in the U.S.'s Midwestern wheat belt.
A comparison with the U.S. shows a basic weakness. Eastward from Salt Lake City (comparable to Astrakhan in temperature and moisture) the series of soil types is virtually the same as in Russia.
But there are two differences: 1) the temperature stays mild and steady (mean annual temperature 55° F.) along most of the U.S. soil range and 2) rainfall increases toward the seaboard where it is most needed. In Russia, the mean temperatures are much lower and rainfall is only moderately higher in the poor-soil areas of the north. In the U.S., climatic factors become more favorable as soil gets poorer; in the U.S.S.R. soil and climate become less favorable together. Agriculturally, Russia runs the wrong way.
Before World War I, Russia's farm output had to sustain a nation of 137 million people, 86% of them peasants. Now, with a food output only some 30% larger than that of 1913, it has to sustain a peasantry of about the same size as in 1913, plus a new proletariat of 60-odd million city workers — half again more people, a third more food.
This does not mean that the Russians are likely to starve — in peace or war. It does mean that the weak agricultural base will be a drag upon any very rapid expansion of Russian industry.
How Much Do Shortages Mean?