ИСТИНА

Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan have recently reemerged as the leading grain exporters with their share in the global grain exports increasing from 1% in 1991 to 18% in 2013. The projections of future grain production, released by the respective governments, suggested that within a few years three countries together would surpass the European Union and the United States in terms of wheat and overall grains exports both. Notwithstanding these optimistic projections, we found that the required long-term increase of grain yields have never been observed in the past and is unsustainable. In addition to this assumption of unprecedented rates of yield improvement, the governmental targets do not account for the impacts of climate change. We (Lioubimtseva et al., 2015) compared three scenarios of future changes in grain yields: “Federal Programme” (support of producers), “Historical Trend” (business as usual), and “Historical Trend plus Climate” (business as usual under a drier climate), outlined below, discussing the likelihoods and outcomes for each of these scenarios.