Agriculture in The Russian Empire - Improving Agriculture - Improved Crop-rotations

Improved Crop-rotations

Improved multi-course crop-rotations began slowly to be introduced on mir arable in the late 19th century. The early experiments were mainly on the non-Black-earth lands, especially the Central-Industrial, West and North-West regions. Flax was the first `new' crop to be introduced into the rotation. But within the three-course system flax exhausted the soil's fertility; peasants learned to replenish it by planting clover. Multi-course systems with sown fodder grasses and clover (travopole, travoseyanie) allowed more cattle and other livestock to be kept, who in turn provided more manure to increase soil fertility. This `fodder-crop revolution' had earlier been central to the 18th-century agricultural revolution in Western Europe. By 1924 multi-crop rotations covered 7.2% of the sown area of the Russian Federation. But these improvements were largely confined to the Central-Industrial, Western and North-Western regions. Moscow province was at the forefront; there the three-field system was almost eliminated by the end of 1926. But, up to the mid 1920s, such progress was largely confined to the Central-Industrial, Western and North-Western regions. The grain-surplus areas had as yet seen little progress. In 1924 multi-course systems covered just 3% of arable in the Central Black-Earth region, and the situation was even worse elsewhere. But thereafter rapid progress was made in the grain-surplus areas. It also continued in the grain-deficit areas. By 1927 multi-course rotations covered 17.3% of the sown area in the Russian Federation as a whole. And `y 1928 grass had almost everywhere replaced fallow, the most important exception being the Central Black-Earth region'.