Suddenly Things Become Clearer

[Anomalocaris]

I didn't know we used to be the top wheat supplier. Or that Russia could be, given how could it's supposed to be. I guess it's not permafrost all the way down.

There are plenty of good wheat growing areas in European Russia.  For most of the last half millennium it was effectively the bread basket of Western Europe (well European Russia and Ukraine).

Not true.  It is true Ukraine has some of the most fertile wheat producing farmlands in the world. It is also true wheat was a huge export of the Czarist Russia.   But Russian and Ukrainian wheat production collapsed because turkey joined the central powers during WWI and denied Russia the routes to ship Ukrainian wheat to Europe. As a result of subsequent civil war, forced collectivization, and WWII, Soviet wheat production did not equal czarist levels until 1968, by which time what was a large surplus during czarist times could not come close to meeting Soviet union’s own needs. Soviet Union remained a large net importer of wheat for almost its entire existence. Ironically even during the Cold War the United States remained the top supplier of wheat to the Soviet Union.