Tatarstan President participated in All-Russia teleconference on cattle breeding

Today the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev held All-Russia teleconference devoted to the development of cattle breeding and small-scale farms in the rural area. The Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov took part in the session from the Kazan Kremlin.

Starting the session, the Prime minister of the Russian Federation emphasized the importance of the discussed issue. “Taking into consideration new tasks for AIC (including the aim to provide food supply security under the conditions of sanctions pressure), we are to make a number of decisions to stimulate the development of cattle breeding despite of some financial difficulties we have now”, said Medvedev. “It is necessary to broaden the range of domestic meat and dairy products”.

According to the words of D. Medvedev, Russia has to become more independent from imported meat, milk and dairy products. “Farm households can help us a lot. In 2013 10% of domestic agricultural products were produced by businesses and farms, in cattle breeding the figure was 5%”, said Medvedev.

He also noted that for the period of 2008-2013 the state allocated about 315 billion rubles as a financial support to cattle breeding. Cattle and poultry production tripled for this period. “Of course, this figure is impressive. However, the increase was mainly owing to pig and poultry production. There is not such a success in beef production, at least, now”, said the prime Minister.

The Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation Nikolai Fedorov reported that for the period of 2008-2013 poultry production for slaughter increased by more than 70%, pig production for slaughter – by more than 34%, egg production increased by about 9%.

In 2013, 2,481,000 tons of cattle and poultry and 9.5 million tons of dairy products were produced for import. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, additional allocations against the project of the redrafted state program will enable to guarantee an increase in cattle and poultry production for slaughter at more than 1.5 million tons by 2020. “We can reduce import in this sphere by more than 1.5 million tons and reduce milk import by more than 3 million of tons”, reported Nikolai Fedorov.

During the videoconferencing, governors of a number of regions gave their reports, too.