Climate change and food stress in Russia: what if the market transforms as it did during the past century? Nikolai Dronin & Andrei Kirilenko Received: 3 October 2005 / Accepted: 14 March 2007 / Published online: 12 September 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007 Abstract It is expected that a warmer climate would be beneficial for agriculture in high latitudes. However, this general tendency is not necessarily true for all northern countries, as a short growing period is not the only factor limiting agriculture. For Russia, our model shows that the remarkable increase in potential yield in central and northern-forested regions would not compensate for a sharp drop in yields due to increasing frequency of droughts in the currently most productive southern European regions. If this scenario is indeed realized, the majority of Russian regions will continue to rely on import of agricultural products from a few regions with the best soils, and a system of interregional grain trade will remain critical for food security. However, the basic rules of interregional food market have varied widely over the past century. We have attempted an analysis of the potential impact of these basic rules on regional food security by describing four basic historical market scenarios and applying these scenarios to our results for climate change impact on agriculture in the 2020s and 2070s. We show that the current system, if it continues, would bring the worst results. We also show that the traditionally effective planned adaptation measures would help little in future climate conditions if the current market system were still in place. 1 Introduction A general tendency found in many publications on climate change impact on agriculture is that under a warmer climate the agriculture output would increase in the higher latitudes and decrease Climatic Change (2008) 86:123–150 DOI 10.1007/s10584-007-9282-z DO9282; No of Pages N. Dronin School of Geography, Moscow State University, Moscow, 119992 GSP-2, Russia e-mail: nick@dronin.geogr.msu.su A. Kirilenko Purdue University, 195 Marsteller Str., West Lafayette, IN 47907-2033, USA Present address: A. Kirilenko (*) University of North Dakota, Stop 9011, Grand Forks, ND 58202, USA e-mail: andrei.kirilenko@und.edu