In recent years, Russia has established herself as the leading supplier of grain worldwide and continues to make ambitious plans for raising its grain production in the long-term. Within the context of Russian agricultural history, the recent high growth of grain production is exceptional. This growth however is not fully replicated by the “weather-yield” crop models, which project only moderate yield increase in the 21st century and fail to predict the most recent record growth in grain yields. The difference between the projected climate-dependent yields and observations is especially high in two of the most important agricultural regions, Central Black Earth and Northern Caucasus, while the rest of the agricultural zone is shows good agreement with the regression models. Similar differences were observed in the late 1960s, which we interpret in terms of the fast changes in agricultural technology during the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) agricultural reforms followed by periods of reversal. We also interpret the current period of high differentiation between weather-yield model results and collected yield as evidence of a higher than usual contribution of agricultural reforms in yield improvements, which, however, are primarily benefiting the large-scale producers located in the most productive areas of Russia.