... -often the result of past investment in technology, infrastructure, institutions, and human capital. Figure 3 illustrates that many of these are located in Latin America, including Argentina, ... of the large ‘bonanza farms’ established with the settlement of the northern Great Plains in the US in the late 1800s, virtually all of which were disbanded and land markets broke them up into ... de-population of the countryside. In Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, area sown to grains has declined by 30 million ha since the end of the Soviet era even as exports, at least in years of normal rainfall,...