Problems of Agricultural Policy Adaptation Within Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

The paper reveals problems of integrating national policy for increasing agricultural production and ecological consequences, including the important aspect of Russia’s ratification of the Paris Agreement on climate, which provides additional opportunities for a decrease in carbon emissions. Current government programs for agricultural development in Russia, which include but are not limited to production growth and increase in agricultural exports, do not take into account the ecological consequences of such growth. The paper analyzes how the agriculture of Russia has evolved in the recent period (2007–2017) and what amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions it has caused. Although in general emissions exhibited a decreasing trend, it was found that ploughing additional land for crop production had caused a large outburst of emissions from a small amount of land. Using the GLOBIOM partial equilibrium model, two scenarios of Russia’s agricultural development until 2030 were formulated. The first one is intensive, with only a small amount of crop area growth but with a 45% increase in yields compared to current levels. The second scenario is an extensive one, with crop area growth of additional 6.4 million hectares and a total yield increase of 24% compared to current levels. Results have shown that crop and meat production increase in both scenarios, but the extensive one involves more emissions from additional ploughed land. To stop these kinds of practices, the recommendations would be to limit the ploughing of additional land and to improve statistical bookkeeping for a more accurate inclusion of land use and respective GHG emissions.