According to some estimates, agricultural production is only 3% of Russia's GDP. After the announcement of the policy of import substitution, it was said that the agro-industrial complex is the only industry which can provide return in terms of GDP growth. However, since the introduction of Russian counter-sanctions, Russian manufacturers have not advanced well in the process of import substitution.
As the Deputy Chairman of the Committee of the Chamber of Commerce for the development of agriculture, the director of the Lenin State Farm, Pavel Grudinin, explained, "we have advanced exactly as much as we have given the money to import substitution. Nothing grows without investment. Therefore, as you can understand from the reports of the Ministry of Agriculture, from the reports of the heads of the banks that we have, which are investing in agriculture, the movement forward, unfortunately, is not as we would like it to be. Moreover, it is clear that, given the disaster with the dollar that occurred in December, the amount of money has to be at least 40, 50, or maybe 100% more, then we would have retained the progressive movement which there could have been in the import substitution sphere and in increasing the production of agricultural products."
According Grudinin, the main task is to produce more agricultural products of better quality with less spending: "We have failed in this task, because if you look at the dynamics of the production, you will find that the amount of milk has not increased. And if someone starts to tell you that we have started to produce more cheese, this is not cheese but a cheese product, and it is clear that if milk production did not grow, there could not be more cheese by definition. In this time we began to import more palm oil and thereby replaced natural cheese with some substitutes.
We have not started to produce more vegetables, though the harvest this year, of course, was very good, and there were favorable conditions for the production of vegetables on the whole territory of the Russian Federation. But the prices that we have today show that we have not built more warehouses, we have not invested in processing."
"50% of fruits and 30% of vegetables are lost right there where they are produced in Russia. It is necessary to invest in the infrastructure to change this vicious situation. That means investing in warehouses, in refineries, and this has not been done," Grudinin believes.
"You see, from the 4 billion rubles that were promised for the development of dairy farming to the construction of new farms, we got 100 million, that means, we will get 100 million. The government says one thing, that it will help, but on the other hand, at the same time, it does not give the money for the development of infrastructure, for the development of projects. Therefore, import substitution has become the substitution of one import with another, or with surrogates," the Deputy Chairman of the Committee of the Chamber of Commerce for the development of agriculture says.
According to him, 16 million people live below the poverty line in Russia, and talk about food that can be given to them through cards have only started recently. "But for this we need at least to make a government decree, to develop such schemes, and then we need to get a state order, we, I mean, the peasants. Then we will be able to ramp up the production of quality products," - Grudinin claims.
