Agricultural Use of Tundra Soils in the Vorkuta Area, Northeast European Russia

There are two centers of forage production in European Russian tundra, one near Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula and the other around Vorkuta, in the northeast of European Russia. Tundra on the Kola peninsula has no permafrost but around Vorkuta has massive-island permafrost. Vorkuta is a center of a large coal basin where coal has been developed since the 1930s. During the Soviet era, agricultural development of tundra lands was considered expedient around large towns (Vorkuta had pop. 101,000 in 1981; Murmansk, 394,000 in 1982) to supply them with food. Agriculture there included dairy husbandry, forage production, and greenhouse vegetable production.