Tatarstan must become one of the biggest producers of potato

Deputies of the Tatarstan State Council have launched a new project under the conditions of import substitution on a local TV channel “TNV”, the 1st episode of which is devoted to potato. The co-presenter of the new program is the Chairman of the Ecology, Environmental Management and Agricultural Policy Committee of the Tatarstan Sate Council Takhir Khadeyev.

The topic for discussion in the 1st program was potato production in the Tatarstan AIC under the conditions of import substitution. The following officials took part in the program: representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Tatarstan, big producers of potato, representatives of the Ministry of Trade and Industry of the Republic of Tatarstan, heads of villages, representatives of consumers’ cooperatives, scientists, crop breeders, experts, etc. Takhir Khadeyev outlined a problem: the biggest part of potato is imported into Tatarstan from abroad or neighboring republics – Chuvashia and Mordovia. Tatarstan must provide itself with potato, supposes the deputy.

According to the recent data presented by the minister of agriculture and food of the Republic of Tatarstan Ildus Gabdrakhmanov, who also participated in the program, a few years before there were 120,000 ha of land for potato while in 2014 the were only 72,000 ha. However, there was no collapse. The need for potato a year is 600-650 thousand tons in the republic while 1 million 300 thousand tons of potato have been produced.

Takhir Khadeyev supposes that this is a small amount of potato – we need to cultivate not less than 2 million tons. In that case we will have an opportunity to export potato and thus earn money. However, we need to sole a number of problems at first.

Heads of villages from Kukmor and Baltasi municipal districts state that when the spring comes directors of private farm households do not know how much land they should sow with potato – distribution is extremely low. That is why people started to pay more attention to cattle breeding and give not more than 40% of lands for sowing with potato. “Producers need orders”, stated the heads of villages.

Vice-Chairman of “tatpotrebsoyuz” Rashat Shaimardanov spoke on the problems of consumers’ cooperatives. To hold agricultural fairs in Kazan he had to make a lot of effort to find 4,500 tons of potato while in 90s “Tatpotrebsoyuz” bought up to 60,000 tons of potato from villagers and a part was sold to other republics. In 2014 they managed to buy only 8,000 tons of potato. 45,000 tons of potato were purchased from other republics. Ildus Gabdrakhmanov agreed with these facts.

Representatives of retail outlets were also invited to the program. They are not satisfied with not attractive package of potato supplied by farmers. Moreover, there can be potatoes of different size in a bag, potato is usually dirty. People got used to buy clean potatoes in attractive package.

Ildus Gabdrakhmanov told that the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Tatarstan regularly allocated finances to modernize potato-storage houses. There is a special program for that. About 60 million rubles will be allocated for that purpose in 2015. Participants of the program also complained at the lack of good seeds, special potato harvesters, etc. Takhir Khadeyev suggested combining efforts of scientists, producers, officials, heads of villages and deputies in order to solve all the existing problems. He also suggested creating special breeding centers to improve the quality of seeds and bulbs. “Tatarstan must become one of the biggest producers of potato. We need to grow not less than 2 million tons of potato a year. In that case we will have an opportunity to distribute potato starch, which is important for foodstuff industry. It is also widely used in other spheres of economy as well”, he said.