In attendance were Deputy PM Viktoria Abramchenko, Minister
of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev, and representatives from regional governing
bodies, federal authorities, supervisory agencies, unions, scientific and
banking communities, and public organisations.
Abramchenko said that one of the most important tasks was to
increase exports, and pointed out that Russian agricultural products are supplied
to 160 countries in the Middle East, East and South Asia, Africa, the EU, and
the CIS.
She went on to say the target was to double agro-exports by
2024 and key to this was bringing unused agricultural land back into circulation.
Last week, the Ministry reported that since 2013, more than
360 thousand hectares of abandoned and overgrown land had been brought back
into cultivation in the Moscow region alone.
You need to be cautious of these numbers, regional governors
trying to remain in favour may take “abandoned and overgrown” to mean land
that has only been fallow for a short time and over-report.
However, if you are looking for an indication of what
direction the worlds largest wheat exporter wants to take its agriculture, they
are pretty much telegraphing it.
My view on this, if you want to expand your farming
operations, the Ministry is unlikely to get in your way…too much.
Back at the meeting and it was reported that in 2019,
Russian farmers harvested over 121 million tons of grain, which was the second-largest
harvest in post-Soviet history.
Patrushev said despite difficult weather conditions, the current
harvest stands at 101 million tons of grain, and harvesting rates and yields
are well above 2019.
Not strictly true, with 25% of the wheat harvest still to
go, yields are falling and approaching 2019 and 2018 levels, and could go
lower.
Concluding his speech, the Minister of Agriculture said, in
recent years agriculture had shown steady growth, and that they had changed the
perception of farming as an unprofitable and risky industry, to that of a
modern and profitable business.
That’s only one dry year away from being reversed though.