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On 17 February, Russian Minister of Agriculture Elena Skrynnik announced in a plenary session in the State Duma that more than 220 projects will be implemented in the dairy and beef cattle sector in 2010.
Dairy cattle, beef cattle, pig keeping as well as poultry keeping have top priority in terms of state financing in 2010, with the volume of resources being invested in new projects amounting to almost 165 billion roubles.
The Ministry of Agriculture forecasts an increase in milk production of up to 33 million tonnes by 2012 (According to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service, milk production in 2009 reached 32.6 million tonnes) and a cut-back in the volume of imports to 16.6%.
Minister Skrynnik reiterated the fact that replacing imports on the dairy market, inter alia, from Belarus too, would be achieved thanks to governmental support programmes targeting the development of dairy production and by increasing the number of family-run dairy farms. Other interventions scheduled for 2010 concern sterilised milk, butter and hard cheese as well as tariff and customs regulation.
The Minister also pointed out that a number of regions in Russia specialise in dairy cattle breeding. In Mordovia, for example, milk production is 1.8 times higher than milk production in the Altai region and 1.7 times greater than in the Vologda region. Minister Skrynnik went on to say that attempts are being made to resolve the import issue by focusing on such priority areas within the Federation.
Source: Interfax, 04.03.2010
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