World meat industry news

Russian agriculture today is not "Soviet collective farms", but a high-tech industry that influences the development of other industries, said Russian President Vladimir Putin during a conversation with workers at the Tulazheldormash plant.

The agricultural sector pulled the development of the production of agricultural machinery, mineral fertilizers, the industry uses software, space tools, Putin listed.

According to him, Russia's imposition of a food embargo in 2014 was a risky move. “In general, our critics and skeptics said that we would generally be left without the necessary range of food products and without food as such. But this did not happen…,” the President said.

Domestic agricultural producers have entered the free market with their products, and their quality is higher than that of Western ones, Putin said. “Because from the very beginning, from the very first steps, we began to pay special attention to standards in the field of ecology and food quality,” the head of state said. Since Soviet times, all domestic food standards and norms have been much higher than in the EU countries, he compared.

The President also recalled that Russian agricultural exports have grown many times, its volumes are now “incomparable to what it was”, while imports, on the contrary, have decreased. “I won’t even list the nomenclature now, we bought [chicken] legs, in my opinion, almost 1.4 million tons or something like that, and now we are exporting and fighting for sales markets, including pork,” he said.

According to the Federal Customs Service, in 2022 Russia supplied agricultural raw materials and food to foreign markets for 41.3 billion US dollars, which is 14.8% more than in 2021, when, according to the updated information of the service, exports amounted to 35.96 billion dollars. According to Putin, the production of agricultural products from 2014 to 2022 in the Russian Federation increased by 27.4%, and the export of agricultural products in 2022 reached 41.6 billion dollars, an increase compared to 2014 was 2.1 times.

According to RIA Novosti, the head of state also drew attention to the need to strive for 100% localization of production in Russia in critical areas. “Even if we have localized 90% of some equipment, the car will still not run if 10% is not enough,” Putin stressed, adding that this does not mean “that we should strive for 100% localization everywhere.”

“Where we see that it is possible to establish stable, good, stable, reliable relations with partners who really want to work with us, and work for the medium and longer term, we will definitely cooperate with these partners. We will not be limited exclusively to our territory. But in critical areas, of course, we must strive for full sovereignty,” the president said.