Maximum Agricultural Productivity of the Eurasian Steppe?

[stevej713]

The idea of a more developed Eastern Europe/Russia is an AH scenario I'm most interested in, but I haven't been able to understand much about it.

My question is - how much potential does the blue-highlighted land in this map have in terms of agricultural productivity/usefulness? How does it compare to, say, the Mississippi basin? What could Russia (or theoretically any country) have done to develop this land to make it a major hub of agriculture, industry, and transportation? Was it even possible?

 

[durante]

I think a more appropriate comparison (rather than the Mississippi-Missouri) is the northern plains/Canadian prairies. The area in blue east of the Urals has a population of close to 30 million I believe. I believe the current Russian government is trying to encourage settlement. The Soviets also half-heartedly created Birobidzhan in the area, which could've gone differently.
Parts of the area are in Manchuria, as well, and the area could play host to Korean, Japanese and Chinese settlers.

 

[Emperor Gustavus Adolphus]

I think only the regions to the West of the Volga River were productive. To the East, the land is mostly suitable for Nomadic Pastoralism, for the most part.

 

[Arkenfolm]

OTL there were a lot of (mostly) failed agricultural programs conducted by the USSR in this area. However, I believe the eastern areas near Mongolia and China were not as heavily utilised so there's a lot of potential for expansion there.

But it is without a doubt possible this entire area could be a breadbasket of the world as is the Canadian Prairies and Ukraine assuming things like the pitfalls of the Virgin Lands Campaign are avoided, meaning less monoculture of grain and building more of the necessary storage and infrastructure for both the crops and the farmworkers.

It's speculated that without World War I and the chaos that followed, the Russian Empire would easily have had over 700 million people, so it's highly possible that at some point a huge number of these people go to the east and this area is much more extensively farmed in order to feed them (and for export).

Parts of the area are in Manchuria, as well, and the area could play host to Korean, Japanese and Chinese settlers.

Manchuria is case in point given it has tens of millions of people and has attracted Han Chinese and Korean settlement since the Qing Dynasty (and Japanese settlement during the 1920s-30s).

I think only the regions to the West of the Volga River were productive. To the East, the land is mostly suitable for Nomadic Pastoralism, for the most part.

Once you have reliable shipping via waterways and later railroads, good irrigation from wells/rivers, and ploughs good enough to churn up the rich soil, it becomes some of the most productive farmland in the world, much as the case with Ukraine and the Plains in North America.