Rye is a cereal grain which is primarily grown in Continental Europe and to a lesser degree North America. Outside these regions, rye has limited production or consumption. In this section the major areas of rye production will be discussed. Soviet rye production declined so much that by 1980 the U.S.S.R. was importing 500,000 tonnes of rye, mostly from Canada. This situation was loudly protested by Soviet agricultural experts who argued strongly that a decline in rye production would hurt the Soviet economy. They argued that rye is a much more secure and economical crop for vast areas of Soviet land, especially the more northerly regions. Possibly because of this protest, production dramatically increased during the 1980s, from a low of 7.3 million tonnes in 1979 to a production of 14.4 million tonnes in 1993 United States Department of Agriculture, PS&D View, 1993.

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