>>This is about the planting season...

The RF has a lot of ag acreage, but it's not particularly productive per hectare, ranging from "34 centners per hectare for the top ten regions and 41 centners per hectare for the top five regions". Mostly due to a mix of poor soil, unreliable precipitation, short growing season. A very large area but poor soil makes them a wheat exporter. Ukraine was one of the USSR's most productive growing areas.

Without getting into whether regenerative farming would help (it would!) or whether that would reduce the energy needed per acre (also yes!) they have a particularly large area that needs to be plowed, cultivated, harrowed, seeded, harvested - and each of these is one or several passes over all that acreage, so a huge amount of diesel burned.

As a 'gas station with nukes' this hasn't mattered - up until now...

Also: I’ve been unable to find the amount of soil amendment they’ve been using. To the extent that that’s nitrogen, there’s the Haber process, which is enormously energy-hungry (and uses methane as a feedstock). Like diesel, that hasn’t mattered up until now, either.

Their ag land has never been productive enough that higher populations (and highways) made sense, so all the wheat produced needs to go by rail — and the roller bearings needed for RR carriage ‘trucks’ have been under sanction since 2014.

Trivia: the centner (50kg) is a holdover from the Soviet Union. No idea why they felt the need — but we use bushels which makes as little sense. :-)