ИСТИНА

Replacing a rainfed cropping system with an irrigated one is widely assumed to be an effective measure for climate change adaptation. But some finding suggests that reassessing climate change risk in agriculture is crucial not to overestimate potential of irrigation-based adaptation. Climate change influences production of cereals in Russia but this general perception of beneficiary effect of a warmer climate is unlikely to hold, primarily due to increasing risk of droughts in the most important agricultural areas of the country. Since Russia is a major crop producer which influences world grain prices, it is important to investigate how climate change can affect the potential growth of grain production in Russia and especially in the Southern regions of Russia, of the Black sea and Volga river basins. To achieve this, the present study seeks to answer two research questions: 1) will climate change have a positive impact on grain production in Russia? If not, 2) could the negative impacts of climate change on grain production and national food security be minimized through expanding irrigation? Using IMPACT-3 model, we analyze three scenarios for agricultural development in Russia until 2030 in the context of climate variability or change. The base scenario assumes no alteration both in the currently irrigated areas and in climate. The irrigation scenario considers the expansion of irrigated areas in the Black Sea and Volga River basins by 15% till 2025 in the context of climatic changes. The dry scenario incorporates the potential risks of global warming without the expansion of irrigated areas, resulting in the reduction of wheat, rice and vegetables yields by an average of 10-15% by 2030. The irrigation scenario projections show doubling of gross agricultural output in 2030 as compared to the dry scenario. The consumer prices under the same irrigation scenario are projected to be lower only by 5%. Expanding irrigation under wheat may lead to competition with wheat production in rainfed areas. As a consequence, the rainfed areas under wheat may decrease, whereas the production of irrigated wheat may grow. However, this growth may not fully compensate the lost rainfed production and thus may lead to lower growth rates of overall wheat production in Russia, with wide-reaching implications not only for domestic consumers, but also for the international grain market. The estimation results in the welfare module indicate that the first scenario (that of irrigated areas expansion) is more profitable for agricultural producers since their profit increases by 11%, and consumer welfare due to consumer prices decrease also increases slightly by 0.4%. The agricultural producer welfare surplus doesn't influence the consumers welfare in the proportional way because, there are other factors affecting this in Russia such as long distance between the producers and consumers, which lead to high transport costs and also the oligopoly issues on the retail market. Thus, to have a full positive impact from irrigation development Russia has to improve the situation in other spheres of economy.