MOSCOW: Russians have long grown vegetables on land around their out-of-town cottages, or dachas, but the country’s economic crisis has triggered a surge in seed sales as some families increasingly turn to home-grown food to get by.

Seeds for the humble potato are in particular demand by “dachniki” who flee the city in droves in the summer months for country refuges that range from shacks to stone houses. Humble or grand, the dacha is a central part of Russian life.

The Russian branch of DIY chain OBI, which has a big garden department, says it roughly doubled potato seed sales in 2015 and that this year they are also up strongly.

“Seed sales this year have grown almost 40 per cent in certain categories,” Maxim Suravegin, the head buyer for gardening products for OBI in Russia, told Reuters.

“It’s mainly vegetables — tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and stuff used to make salads.” Other retailers say the same, with hypermarket chain Lenta reporting seed sales up 40 per cent year-on-year.

The increase is driven by soaring inflation, falling real incomes, a weak rouble and a government ban on many European food products in retaliation for Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

The trend has a silver lining for the Kremlin, staving off serious food shortages that could stoke social unrest while keeping people busy with an activity dachniki and retailers say brings a measure of calm and an escape from the strains of modern Russian life.

The private dacha plot survived the Soviet era when agricultural land was seized by the state to try to meet rising demand. It became a means of basic survival in later crises.

When food shortages appeared under Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘perestroika’ reforms in the final years of the Soviet Union, many Russians fell back on their allotments.

In the early 1990s, after the Soviet break-up, the experience was repeated, with city-dwellers leasing large tracts to grow their own vegetables and many subsisting on potatoes.

In 2008, when the global financial crisis shook Russia harder than many others, seed sales also boomed.

“It is a crisis tendency,” Andrei Tumanov, the head of the organisation of Russian Horticulturalists, told the Russian news service. “When the government is struggling a bit, we immediately see more potatoes and vegetables planted.”

Turning to land

Elena Bychkova, a pensioner in the Belgorod region, is one of those increasingly looking to the land.

Food prices where Bychkova lives around 580km south of Moscow rose over 11 per cent in 2015, while state pensions in the area shrank by 1.8 per cent.

That pushed the price of some foodstuffs out of reach for Bychkova, who draws a pension of around 14,000 roubles ($213.46) a month, prompting her to increasingly rely on the fruits of her dacha.

“What we grow on our dacha plot is enough for the whole season for two families,” Bychkova told Reuters by telephone.

“Both my family and that of my daughter no longer need to buy fruit or vegetables. In a crisis that makes a big difference.” Bychkova grows potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and carrots among other things, a portion of which she pickles in large glass jars so they can be consumed in the winter months.

“When you’ve got no money you can fry some potatoes, open a jar of salted cucumbers and you’ve got dinner,” she said.

Retailers say they noticed a jump in demand for seeds at the end of 2014 after the Russian annexation of Crimea when the rouble lost a lot of its value against the dollar, triggering steep food inflation and lower real incomes.

Not all seed buyers rely on their allotments to meet basic food needs. Some see growing their own produce as a hobby to replace foreign holidays they once enjoyed but which are now too expensive.

“Many have returned to their dachas which have replaced the holidays,” said OBI’s Suravegin, who said those kind of customers didn’t count the roubles when it came to buying seeds, flowers and plants.

“We’re not talking about big financial outlays here, but they do bring positive emotions,” he said.

About half a dozen seed buyers interviewed on a recent weekend at one OBI store in Moscow, where incomes are higher than most of Russia, were reluctant to link their purchases to hardship, proclaiming, rather, a love of horticulture.

“I’m doing this for the second year running,” said Anna, a 46-year-old from southern Russia who declined to give her surname. “I buy cucumbers and tomatoes to feed the family. Crisis or no crisis, I love to grow vegetables.”

Others though said changing circumstances had played a role.

“I lost my job and now have time to devote myself to the allotment and dacha,” Svetlana, 50, who said she did not want to give her surname, said.