ILSHAT Gumerov was lost in thought in the scorching sun, his face a picture of helplessness. Before his eyes was an expanse of his 700-hectare wheat fields which were drying out. Starting in April, not a single drop of rainwater fell on his fields.

Gumerov estimated that two-thirds of his wheat crops perished, parched by the sun. “It’s a real disaster,” said the farmer in Volga, Republic of Tatarstan, one of the states in Russia, in early