"Russia will reach vegetable self-sufficiency in 5 years"

Russia needs 3 to 5 years to provide the market with 90% domestic vegetables, as announced by the Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev during a Russia 24 channel interview. He says vegetable farming now is developing at a rapid pace, and has experienced a 30% growth over the last three years. “We need three to five years to cover 90% of the vegetable market,” Tkachev predicts. “We will manage to completely bridge the deficit and produce vegetables domestically within 5-7 years”, he added, emphasizing that Russia now imports 1,5 mtpa of vegetables.

“We had a retarded spring, and a delayed vegetable planting. So the ripening stage has been suspended for 2 or 4 weeks. It has definitely affected the market: the price, logistics, etc. So we figure out that due to the regions with favourable weather conditions, we will get good indicators as of 16−16,5 million t”, Tkachev estimated.

“I truly hope that we will be able to bridge a 2 m t deficit before 2020. And after 2020, approximately 1 m t will remain, and it is realistic”, he noted. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the overall fruit and vegetable storage capacity across the country is now estimated at 7 m t. Additional storage capacities will allow producers’ manoeuvring on the market, said the Minister, referring to the European practices. “The benefit of European countries consists in their long-standing attention to the storage infrastructure, particularly, vegetable and potato storages. It enables manoeuvring: if there is an excess of any product, it can be stored just until the price is adequate for it to enter the market. And on the other hand, as we have experienced this year: all products emerged the market, and we have nothing left”, the Minister explained.

As announced by the Chairman of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina, the early summer price surge is associated with the lack of storage infrastructure. Tkachev, in his turn, has noted that the prices will fall in case of gross yield growth. “We have to produce more for the price to stay at the adequately low level,” Tkachev said.

Source: Agroinvestor / Agro Greenhouse Complexes Russia