Bread is the staff of life

On November 26 2014, Nikolai Fedorov held a session of the Agricultural Ministry collegium of the Russian Federation devoted to the “Mechanisms of commodity and purchasing intervention for agricultural products price regulation”.

Starting the session, Nikolai Fedorov reported that by November 25 2014 110/1 million tons of crops had been thrashed. Over 62 million tons of winter and spring wheat had been milled in the country in total.

According to forecasts, the stock of grains for 2014-2015 will be 89.7 million tons, taking into account carry-over stocks 2013-2014 of 14/4 million tons, 1.1 million tons of imported goods and 30 million tons of exported goods. “This supplies in full the needs of the country, which make up 71.8 million tons with carry-over stocks for the next year at the amount of 17.9 million tons”, emphasized the federal minister.

The main mechanism of the state regulation on the Russian grain market is the mechanism of state purchasing and commodity intervention. According to the Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation it works quite effectively and enables to react on changes of the prices both at grains and other kinds of products.

With the aim of improving of the grain market regulation, in 2013-2014 the mechanism of the state purchasing and commodity intervention with the opportunity for agricultural producers to buy out the grains was firstly introduced.

This year the state purchasing intervention on the grain market started earlier than often – since September 30. There are interventions in 12 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. By November 25 2014, 1,414,160,375 rubles have been spent to buy 258,930 tons of grains. The intervention fund makes up 1,476,213 tons.

According to the words of the Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, the state purchasing intervention enabled to stabilize the prices on the grain market preventing their falling.

Organizing the storage of the intervention fund stocks, the main task is to provide quantity and quality safekeeping and integrity, for which a state agent is responsible.

During the discussion with the participation of the representatives of federal and local authorities, experts, scientists, market participants a number of recommendations was given, which is to be taken into consideration before the draft regulations on the implementation of the state purchasing and commodity interventions to regulate the market of agricultural products, raw materials and commodities has been laid on the tapis.

“Bread is the staff of life”, summed up Nikolai Fedorov, emphasizing a vital influence of the grain market on the global policy and economy.