Louis Guy Michael is assigned to be American Embassy in Moscow as the first agricultural attache.| 1946 | Cold War begins. |
| 1948 | President of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences T.D. Lysenko begins to purge the academy and its related institutes of geneticists. Many are arrested for “bowing to the West” and “praise of American democracy. |
| 1955 | Vavilov is posthumously rehabilitated. |
| February 1955 | Lauren Soth, an editorial writer for the DesMoines Register, suggests in an editorial that a delegation of Soviets should come to Iowa to “get the lowdown on raising high quality cattle, hogs, sheep and chickens.” To everyone’s surprise, CPSU First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev reads a translation of the editorial and orders that a delegation be sent to Iowa. (Soth’s editorial later wins a Pulitzer Prize for its impact on international relations.) |
| Summer 1955 | Twelve American agriculturalists visit the USSR and a Soviet delegation led by Deputy Minister of Agriculture Vladimir Matskevich visits the U.S. During his forty-day visit to the U.S., Matskevich spends a day with Roswell Garst looking at his hybrid seed corn operation. |
| September 1955 | Roswell Garst visits the USSR and meets with Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviets order 5,000 tons of seed corn. |
| September 1959 | CPSU First Secretary Nikita S. Khrushchev visits the farm of Roswell and Elizabeth Garst in Coon Rapids, Iowa. |
| February 1964 | The U.S. and Soviet Union sign a bilateral cultural exchange agreement that includes agriculture. |
| May 1972 | President Richard M. Nixon visits Moscow. Détente begins. |
| June 24, 1973 | President Richard M. Nixon and CPSU General Secretary L.I. Brezhnev agree to form a US-USSR Joint Committee on Agricultural Cooperation. The Soviet Ministry of Agriculture (later Gosagroprom) and USDA develop working groups and begin scientific and technical exchange programs. At their peak, the programs accommodate exchange of six teams from each country per year. |
| 1976 | The National 4-H Council and the Department of State negotiate an agreement with the Soviet Union on exchange of farm youth, the Young Agricultural Specialist Exchange Program. |
| 1986 | All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences President Aleksandr A. Nikonov champions the posthumous rehabilitation of Aleksandr Chayanov and others of his economic school. |
| 1988 | Intergovernmental agreement on mutual relations in the field of commercial fishing is signed. |
| August 1991 | The self-proclaimed State Committee for the Emergent Situation (GKChP) attempts a coup in the Soviet Union. |
| September 1991 | At the request of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, USDA sends a team led by Under Secretary Richard T. Crowder to examine the food situation in the Soviet Union. |
| October 1991 | Secretaryof Agriculture Edward R. Madigan leads a second USDA team to the Soviet Union to examine the food situation. RSFSR Minister of Agriculture G.V. Kulik requests urgent delivery of humanitarian food aid. |
| December 1991 | Soviet Union dissolves. |
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| 1992 | Intergovernmental Agreement on Restriction of Pacific Salmon Commercial Fishing is signed. |
| 1992-1995 | USDA delivers humanitarian food aid to the Russian Federation as well as other former Soviet states. Millions of dollars of commodities are delivered via non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Proceeds from the sale of these commodities are used for rural development, creation of rural credit institutions, and support of farm privatization, among other goals. |
| 1992-1993 | USDA funds placement of private-sector food distribution executives in Moscow and Novosibirsk (as well as Minsk and Almaty) to assist in the transition to private-sector wholesale distribution of food. |
| 1992-1994 | In response to an outstanding 1991 request from then-President Gorbachev, USDA funds a model farm project in Leningrad oblast through the Emerging Democracies Program. |
| 1992-1994 | At the request of the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, USDA provides a resident, full-time agricultural policy adviser, Prof. Craig Infanger of the University of Kentucky, to Minister V.N. Khlystun. |
| 1992-present | USAID operates the Farmer-to-Farmer program through U.S. NGOs. Under this program, American volunteers donate their time and expertise to Russian counterparts. Volunteers range from poultry experts assisting individual producers to a legislative policy analyst sharing information on U.S. agricultural legislation. ACDI/VOCA is the current Farmer-to-Farmer program implementer. |
| 1992-present | USDA operates the Cochran Fellowship Program, under which short-term training in the United States is offered to Russian professionals engaged in agriculture, agribusiness, and agricultural policy. Funding sources include USDA appropriations, FREEDOM Support Act, and Emerging Markets Program resources. By 2005 about 680 Russian specialists have received training. |
| 1993 | At the request of the Russian Federation government, USDA agrees to donate 817,000 tons of commodities under the Food for Progress Program, under the condition that the commodities be marketed through new, private sector channels, and not through Russian government organizations. The food products are wholesaled through private commodity exchanges. |
| 1993 | USDA funds training for 300 commodity traders and brokers to assist in privatization of wholesale food trade. Training is implemented by the University of Illinois, North Dakota State University, Southern University, and IMEMO. |
| 1993-1996 | USDA funds work by the Agricultural Marketing Service and Economic Research Service to create a market news system in the Ministry of Agriculture as well as local, pilot market news systems in three oblasts. |
| 1993-2003 | USDA donates commodities to the Russian Farms Community Project, which are sold with the proceeds going to creation and expansion of the farm project. |
| 1993-present | USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Russia’s State Quarantine Service collaborate on control of the Asian gypsy moth in the Russian Far East to keep exports from Russia to the U.S. west coast from being impeded. |
| 1994-present | USDA Forest Service and Russian Forest Service collaborate on sustainable forestry practices, forest health issues, forest fire management and preservation of the Siberian tiger through a series of training workshops, exchanges, and demonstration projects. |
| 1995 | Agriculture Committee formed under the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission. |
| 1995-2006 | USDA funds National Agricultural Statistics Service efforts to assist Goskomstat (later Rosstat) in adopting survey sampling methods to measure agricultural production in the non-collectivized agriculture sector. |
| 1995-present | Using FREEDOM Support Act funds, USDA operates the Faculty Exchange Program, under which Russian and agricultural economics, finance and law professors receive advanced training in U.S. agricultural universities. By 2005 78 Russian professors have been trained. |
| 1996 | Intergovernmental Agreement on Protection of Transborder Fish Resources in the Central Part of the Sea of Okhotsk is signed. |
| 1997 | Using FREEDOM Support Act funds, USDA hosts a delegation of high-level policy makers and heads of oblast agricultural departments. During a three-week visit, members of the delegation meet high-level US agricultural policy makers. |
| 1998-2000 | The Russian Federation government again requests food aid from the United States. The first food aid agreement is signed December 23, 1998 by American Charge d’Affaires John Tefft and Russian Deputy Prime Minister G.V. Kulik. Some of the ruble proceeds from sale of the food aid in Russia are used to capitalize the Russian Rural Credit Cooperative Development Foundation, a major source of funds for Russia’s nascent rural credit cooperatives. RCCDF has loaned approximately $30 million for farm working capital. Some proceeds are also donated to the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Plants named for N.I. Vavilov in St. Petersburg for modernization of its germplasm storage facilities. |
| 1998-2001 | USDA leads agricultural trade and investment missions under the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, co-funded by USDA and USAID under the Program to Revitalize Agriculture through Regional Investment (PRARI). PRARI operates during this time in Chuvashiya, Krasnodar, Lipetsk, Omsk, Rostov, Samara, Saratov, Tomsk, Vologda, and Voronezh, and results in $10 million of direct investment. |
| 1998-present | USAID funds Mobilizing Agricultural Credit and Cooperative Development programs which support increased access for private and restructured farms to financial resources. National expansion of the rural credit system is a primary goal. About 250 rural credit cooperatives receive loans from Rural Credit Cooperative Development Foundation and operate in more than 22 regions of Russia. About 30 cooperative leaders received US-based training under the Cochran Fellowship Program sponsored by USDA. |
| 1999 | USDA co-funds with U.S. private companies creation of the Elinar Broiler joint venture in Naro-Fominsk, Moscow oblast. |
| 1999-2000 | USDA funds feed milling and poultry production training provided by the American Soybean Association. |
| 2001-2004 | USAID funds the BASIS Project, a bilateral, cooperative agricultural economic research effort to share western economic analysis methods with Russian researchers. Participating Russian institutions include the Agrarian Institute, Institute for Economy in Transition, IKAR, NEI and VNIIETU; U.S. institutions include the USDA Economic Research Service, University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, Georgia Southern University, and Iowa State University. |
| 2001 | USDA funds education of Russian senior officials on accession to the World Trade Organization. |
| 2002 | USDA funds training in plant genetics, biotechnology, and intellectual property rights. |
| 2002 | USDA Forest Service establishes a long-term relationship with Tahoe-Baykal Institute (TBI) to promote development of eco-tourism at Lake Baykal and to improve its watershed management. |
| May 2003 | Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman and Russian Minister of Agriculture A.V. Gordeyev ssign in Washington a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the field of agriculture. |
| 2003-present | USDA's Agricultural Research Service collaborates with 16 Russian research institutes to conduct veterinary medical, plant health, and biological research. |
| 2004 | Using U.S. Department of Commerce funds, USDA provides training to Russian government veterinarians on animal disease risk assessment. |
| 2004-2005 | USDA funds training in use of grain warehouse receipts. |
| 2004-2005 | USDA funds travel of Russian delegations to the Asia-Pacific Economic Conferences on biotechnology (Seminar on Positive investment Environment for Agricultural Biotechnology, December 2004; and High Level Policy Dialogue on Agricultural Biotechnology, March 2005). |
| January 6, 2005 | Mutual Fisheries Agreement is extended to December 31, 2008. |
| March 2005 | U.S. Grains Council hosts a Russian State Duma delegation to the United States for study of American agricultural policy. |