Condition and Perspectives for Development of Russian Agriculture

Agriculture in Russia is in the process of restructuring and overcoming the production and economic crisis. Measures undertaken in order to make agricultural development more dynamic are only partially successful. The level of agricultural production is still lower than in 1990-1991. Particularly strong difficulties can be observed in attempts to accelerate development of animal production. In conditions of rapid increase of people's income, increase in production achieved in last few years did not bring the reduction of dynamics of increasing food imports nor did it improve the country's food self-sufficiency. As a result Russia becomes a bigger and bigger importer of agricultural and food products, especially of animal origin. Analyses indicate that even full implementation of tasks written down in the programme for the development of agriculture for 2008-2012 and satisfying assumptions concerning the improvement of country's food security, would not lead to Russia's food self-sufficiency even in 2020. At the same time Russia, due to low level of development of animal-origin food production, is a large and growing exporter of cereal, oil plants and oil. Russia's entering into WTO and the financial crisis can hamper development trends in Russian agriculture. Simultaneously, however, these factors can also limit dynamics of the national demand for food. Such conditions may cause further increase of export of vegetable products.