THE PARK STEPPE is at the present time the sphere of greatest economic activity in Siberia. It contains large areas of good agricultural land ; and the steppes of Ichim, which lie between the Urals and the Irtysh, the steppe of Baraba, further to the east, and the valleys and steppes on the west of the Altai, are all more or less covered with a fertile black soil similar to that of European Russia. Over much of the steppe of Baraba the rainfall is insuffi cient for the growth of crops; but, in the other districts mentioned, cereals are extensively cultivated, although they are always exposed to a certain amount of danger from summer drought and early autumn frost. Wheat ranks first in importance, and during the years 1905-10 occupied on an average an area of about 6,000,000 acres ; but the yield was low, and did not exceed 11 bushels to the acre. For this, there were several reasons. The Siberian peasant is but a poor farmer, and he has been confirmed in his slipshod ways by the fertility of the soil, which leads to extensive, rather than intensive, methods of cultivation. Formerly, the prac tice was to crop the land with the same cereal for a number of years in succession, only allowing an occasional year's rest, and then to let it lie fallow for a considerable time ; but recently a system of rotation has been introduced, American machinery is being more extensively used, and the prospects of better cultivation are, on the whole, somewhat brighter than they have hitherto been.
Cattle are raised in large numbers, but, partly as a result of the rigorous winters which prevail, the breed is of an inferior type, and there has been a tendency to sacrifice quality to quantity. With the development of the butter industry, attempts have been made to improve the native cattle by the importation of animals from abroad, and these attempts seem to have been at least partly successful, notwithstanding the great difficulty there is in acclima tizing foreign stock. The manufacture of butter, which has now
become the most flourishing of Siberian industries, owes its origin to Danes, who first made the farming population acquainted with modern methods of dairying. The matter was then taken up by the State, and the export of butter, very largely to the United Kingdom, has gradually increased until it now amounts to about 55,000 tons annually. The chief centres of production are at Kurgan, Omsk, and Petropavlovsk, although over one-third of the total quantity is obtained from the rich valleys and steppes round Barnaul, on the west of the Altai. Two reasons may be adduced for the rapid rise of the butter industry : the Siberian grasslands are said to produce milk of great richness, and the freight on butter is in proportion to its value much less than that on wheat.
Although this region is the most densely populated in Siberia, and contains over one-half of the total population of the country (which, in 1910, numbered 10,000,000, including that of Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk), manufactures have made but little progress. Such as exist are connected with working up agricultural, pastoral, and forest products, and include flour-milling, brewing, tanning, and match-making. The inhabitants are, as a rule, too poor to buy much, and what they actually require can be imported more cheaply by the Siberian railway than it can be manufactured on the spot.