Another NBC nightly news ag story.

It seems that with modern agribizz equipment, fertilizer, and seed, abandoned Russian collective farms are yielding bumper crops. 

But why?  Isn't it really because they were abandoned and left to build the soil with biomass returned to the soil.  Sure the chemical ag will boom for awhile, and Russia has cheap fertilizer made from its natural gas.

But this type of farming will strip the soil in a few short years.