ABSTRACT
The outstanding feature of Russian farming on the eve of the war was its strong cereal-growing bias which, combined as it was in most parts of the country with the traditional three-course system, necessitating the fallowing every season of approximately one-third of the total arable area, tended to reduce both the extent and the yield of the crops. With the exception of the spread of sugar-beet growing, the progress of arable farming in South-Western, the Ukrainian, the Central Agricultural and the Middle Volga regions was far less marked than in those of Petrograd, Moscow and the West. In judging of the evolution of Russian arable farming at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is necessary to bear in mind that the figures for the whole country fail to give any idea of the real development, because the effects of changes in the separate regions are neutralized in the totals by the existence of movements tending to compensate each other.
