The agricultural cooperative "Edinstvo" has united vegetable growers of the Tukaevsky district and supplies vegetables and potatoes to retail chains
Less and less often you see potatoes from Egypt or Pakistan, or carrots from Israel on the local markets. Overseas products are aggressively displaced by our own, Tatarstan. The development of agricultural cooperation plays an important role in it.
In the village of Starye Erykly, dramatic changes have taken place over the past couple of years. Next to a modern potato storage, equipped with a sorting line, a workshop for accepting, sorting, drying, washing, packing potatoes, carrots, and table beets was built. Appropriate equipment was purchased, as well as a huge refrigerator. To provide services to the members of the cooperative, they also purchased an imported carrot harvester and a receiving hopper.
“This became possible thanks to our desire to develop and the state support,” says the chairman of the cooperative Mintalip Minekhanov. - The cost of the object was more than 45 million rubles: own funds of the cooperative and grants from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Tatarstan were invested.
The cooperative was established in April 2014. Today it includes 41 shareholders - legal entities and private household plots. The general meeting of members established a differentiated amount of the annual membership fee - from 500 to 60 thousand rubles, depending on the taxation system used by the agricultural formation and the number of employees.
What are the advantages of cooperative members over non-cooperative agricultural producers?
“In our personal subsidiary farm we grow potatoes, from the sale of which we receive additional income for the family budget,” says Gelusya Mukhametshina, a teacher from Naberezhnye Chelny. - By joining the Unity cooperative, we got rid of the hassle of finding a sales market. This year, for example, we’ve sold 14 tons of potatoes to the cooperative at 10 rubles per kilogram. They sent a car, we shipped the tubers straight from the site. It is very convenient…
This year, the cooperative has accepted about 2000 tons of potatoes and vegetables for processing, washing, packaging and sale.
The products of the cooperative "Edinstvo" are sold at agricultural fairs, and also, according to the signed contracts, are supplied to budgetary institutions and trade networks in Naberezhnye Chelny and Nizhnekamsk.
In the cooperative they develop a project of its own pavilion for the sale of products in the cities of the republic and abroad.
“For the production of vegetables, specialized equipment is required, and we buy it, counting on state support under the republican program of technical modernization,” says Mintalip Minekhanov.