ABSTRACT
About a fifth of the land area of the U.S.S.R. is used agriculturally, compared to over a half in the USA. The Russian farmers' problems in a difficult physical environment have not been lessened by the tasks assigned them by the Soviet authorities. The Revolution brought a return to communal farming in collectivization, although different to the older, small-scale peasant farming, which would doubtless have been unable to produce a large surplus to feed a growing urban population. In a country composed essentially of lowlands, climate and soil rather than slope, aspect, or altitude are the principal factors which restrict expansion of the farmed area and hamper current farming. Farming in the Soviet Union is conducted either by collective farms, which control about two-thirds of the sown area, or by state farms, which are usually found where the organization of collectives is not possible or desirable or where new techniques have to be developed.
