To the potential of advancing development of the steppes of Russia

Abstract

The article is devoted to the potential of advanced development of the steppes of Russia. The existing steppe land-use is considered as the result of four megaprojects: “Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature”, Tselina, radical reforms of the 1990s, and Russia’s accession to the WTO. The sustainable ideological legacy of these mutually exclusive and unfinished projects were: extremely difficult to change the type of use for arable land, priority of compensatory forest use in forest-deficient regions, prohibition of grassland farming systems, idealization of the role of shelter forests and reservoirs, underestimation of ecological-economic services by steppes, especially carbon deposition. The described potential of advancing development of the steppe zone, as well as its natural, historical and scientific prerequisites for its implementation justify the need to develop and implement a national project entitled “Russia’s Steppes: Yield, Diversification of Land Use, Stable Productivity, Environmental Rehabilitation”/ The article outlines the basics of its program. The study of steppe is considered as a center of convergence of sciences for the development and implementation of such a project. The essence of the project is to bring the structure of agricultural land and steppe land use into compliance with the natural prerequisites with the achievement of long-term non-destructive use and a fundamental increase in hectare output.The main components of the project are: equal rights of natural zones in the agrarian policy, adjustment of WTO obligations to support agriculture, new steppe land management, intensive field crops technologies, marbled meat of adaptive cattle breeds and ranching, carbon deposition, steppe reviling, steppe ecotourism.