page_title: Agriculture in Svalbard
section_title: Soviet Union
hierarchical_section_title: Agriculture in Svalbard / History / Soviet Union
caption_attribution_description: English: Piramida (Pyramiden9, an abandoned Sovjet-style settlement at Spirsbergen, Svalbard (Norway). The place was a coal mining community, abandoned in 1998.
context_page_description: Agriculture in Svalbard – the world's northernmost – has a short history, and remains a minor economic factor, but has nonetheless had a culturally and socially significant role, as well as an ecologic impact. Svalbard is also home to the Global Seed Vault, which serves to protect the world's biological and agricultural diversity.
  Polar Permaculture Solutions, AS was formed in January 2015. Polar Permaculture has been focused on producing locally grown food in town, and also with composting food waste.
context_section_description: The former Soviet Union (USSR) possessed several mining settlements on Svalbard. These were administrated largely without Norwegian oversight, and according to Soviet societal norms. They included Barentsburg, Grumant, and Pyramiden. Out of these, at least two had farms – Pyramiden and Barentsburg. Pyramiden, established by Sweden in 1910 and sold to the USSR in 1927, had over a thousand inhabitants in its heyday. Its agriculture was organized along the lines of Soviet collective farming, and included a vegetable greenhouse and an animal farm housing dairy cattle,  pigs, hens and a single horse. For some time, the production surplus was such that eggs could be exported to Longyearbyen. Farming continued following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, until the settlement was closed down in 1998.
  Barentsburg, the second Soviet settlement with a collective farm, was started by the Dutch in the 1920s and sold to the USSR in 1932. It is the sole ex-Soviet town on Svalbard which is still active, Arktikugol having continued the coal mining operations under Russian ownership. The population was once several thousand strong, but is now down to a few hundred. A farm producing vegetables and animal products was established as in Pyramiden, and remains in operation albeit at a smaller scale. In 1988 the farm kept poultry, cattle and pigs, each type of livestock numbering in the tens. Today only the latter remains, in small numbers. The farm, which went through a strong reduction in animal numbers during the harsh winter of 2003–2004, grows for example tomatoes, onions, and peppers. The greenhouse is deemed a necessity, due to the fact that Barentsburg is almost completely isolated from food deliveries during the winter months.
  Soviet agriculture on Svalbard has had a significant impact on the archipelago's ecosystem, through both intentional and accidental introduction of alien species. An example of the former can be found in Pyramiden, where Svalbard reindeer can be seen grazing on the central square's overgrown lawns, in which Ukrainian grass grows on dark, fertile soil likewise imported from Ukraine. An example of the latter is the southern vole, introduced in Grumant – a town founded in 1912 and abandoned in 1965, with a peak population of about eleven hundred. The species, which arrived in hay shipments intended as fodder for the coal mine's horses, is now established, and is one of just three wild terrestrial mammals on Svalbard.
caption: Pyramiden's central square, 2012
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