Located on the western coast of

Agriculture and fishery

Main articles: Agriculture in Russia and Fishing industry in Russia
Wheat in Tomsk Oblast, Siberia
Russia's agriculture sector contributes about 5% of the country's total GDP, although the sector employs about one-eighth of the total labour force.^[398] It has the world's third-largest cultivated area, at 1,265,267 square kilometres (488,522 sq mi). However, due to the harshness of its environment, about 13.1% of its land is agricultural,^[10] and only 7.4% of its land is arable.^[399] The country's agricultural land is considered part of the "breadbasket" of Europe.^[400] More than one-third of the sown area is devoted to fodder crops, and the remaining farmland is devoted to industrial crops, vegetables, and fruits.^[398] The main product of Russian farming has always been grain, which occupies considerably more than half of the cropland.^[398] Russia is the world's largest exporter of wheat,^[401][402] the largest producer of barley and buckwheat, among the largest exporters of maize and sunflower oil, and the leading producer of fertilizer.^[403]
Various analysts of climate change adaptation foresee large opportunities for Russian agriculture during the rest of the 21st century as arability increases in Siberia, which would lead to both internal and external migration to the region.^[404] Owing to its large coastline along three oceans and twelve marginal seas, Russia maintains the world's sixth-largest fishing industry; capturing nearly 5 million tons of fish in 2018.^[405] It is home to the world's finest caviar, the beluga; and produces about one-third of all canned fish, and some one-fourth of the world's total fresh and frozen fish.^[398]

Science and technology

Main article: Science and technology in Russia
See also: Timeline of Russian innovation, List of Russian scientists, and List of Russian inventors
Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), polymath scientist, inventor, poet and artist
Russia spent about 1% of its GDP on research and development in 2019, with the world's tenth-highest budget.^[406] It also ranked tenth worldwide in the number of scientific publications in 2020, with roughly 1.3 million papers.^[407] Since 1904, Nobel Prize were awarded to 26 Soviets and Russians in physics, chemistry, medicine, economy, literature and peace.^[408] Russia ranked 51st in the Global Innovation Index in 2023, down from 45th in 2021.^[409][410]
Since the times of Nikolay Lobachevsky, who pioneered the non-Euclidean geometry, and Pafnuty Chebyshev, a prominent tutor; Russian mathematicians became among the world's most influential.^[411] Dmitry Mendeleev invented the Periodic table, the main framework of modern chemistry.^[412] Nine Soviet and Russian mathematicians have been awarded with the Fields Medal. Grigori Perelman was offered the first ever Clay Millennium Prize Problems Award for his final proof of the Poincaré conjecture in 2002, as well as the Fields Medal in 2006.^[413]
Alexander Popov was among the inventors of radio,^[414] while Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov were co-inventors of laser and maser.^[415] Oleg Losev made crucial contributions in the field of semiconductor junctions, and discovered light-emitting diodes.^[416] Vladimir Vernadsky is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology.^[417] Élie Metchnikoff is known for his groundbreaking research in immunology.^[418] Ivan Pavlov is known chiefly for his work in classical conditioning.^[419] Lev Landau made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.^[420]
Nikolai Vavilov was best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants.^[421] Trofim Lysenko was known mainly for Lysenkoism.^[422] Many famous Russian scientists and inventors were émigrés. Igor Sikorsky was an aviation pioneer.^[423] Vladimir Zworykin was the inventor of the iconoscope and kinescope television systems.^[424] Theodosius Dobzhansky was the central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the modern synthesis.^[425] George Gamow was one of the foremost advocates of the Big Bang theory.^[426]