The First Days: Moscow

Location: Moscow, Russia

Local Time: Way too late

Madison Time: 6:55 PM

Greetings from Moscow! A couple of hours after departing from Stockholm, I arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport where Sasha met me and we began our journey carrying our weight in luggage across the city. I had left the States on Tuesday afternoon, and was a little confused to realize it was now Wednesday afternoon. After some coffee and food, Sasha and I set out to check out some of the city. We walked by many of the old Eastern Orthodox churches, the Moskva River, and Kremlin...

The next morning I got acquainted with some Russian food for breakfast - including "pie water" and "baked milk". Sasha and I then set out for our first meeting of the trip with SovEcon - Russia's only independent agricultural commodity consulting company. We had a fruitful conversation in which we introduced the project and learned about some of the important drivers of wheat production in Russia, as well as how grain markets are structured and how wheat prices have been changing over time. The meeting provided important information about the wheat industry that will help us to structure further data collection. After the meeting we spent some more time checking out important cultural spots around Moscow - of course the old KGB building! And the theater district, some beautiful architecture, and the fanciest grocery store I've ever seen...

Today we had a couple of very interesting meetings. First, we met with Professor Tatyana Nefedova at the Institute of Geography in Moscow who has conducted extensive rural sociology work in Russia. She provided fascinating insight into the Russian agricultural system, and helped us to restructure our interviews to make them more appropriate and culturally sensitive for Russian wheat growers. She brought to light issues such as the importance of being careful when speaking with wheat growers in Russia about weather. In the States, weather is a comfortable topic to discuss that can be used as an icebreaker in a formal interview, but she pointed out that weather conditions are more contentious in Russia, especially given this year's extreme drought conditions and the ramifications it has had for wheat productivity - bringing the topic up too soon could actually make wheat growers feel agitated instead of relaxed and divert the focus of the interview...

Sasha and I wrapped up the day with a visit to the NGO Transparent World, where we learned about the state of remote sensing data used to monitor emergency situations in Russia. Tomorrow we will leave for our next stop - Rostov-on-Don in the important wheat-producing oblast of Rostov where we will conduct interviews with researchers, wheat growers, and other industry experts. We will set out in the afternoon for an overnight train ride to the region. More on that later!