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March 15, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
"Agro-superpower" Russia will harvest 118mn tonnes of grain in 2019, minister says
Grain harvests have been rising steadily in recent years following a massive investment campaign by the state. Russia is now earning some $20bn a year from grain exports – more than it earns from arms exports.
Currently Russia is the world’s top wheat ex- porter. It is also among the leaders in exports of fish and sunflower oil. It is now a net exporter of poultry and self sufficient in pork and is making headway in covering its own needs in beef.
Combined exports of agricultural products grew 20% to $25.9bn in 2018, almost twice as much as exports of arms and weapons, Patrushev said,
making Russia an “agricultural superpower,” added the minister.
“We have an ambitious goal of raising exports of our agricultural industry to $45bn by 2024. Russia has all the necessary capabilities for that today, we have resources, technologies, and mecha- nisms of state support,” the minister told PRIME.
Agriculture has become a strategic sector for
the state. Not only does Moscow want to make Russia independent of imports as a question of national security, Russia is also now earning signif- icant export revenues from the business as it tries to break its dependence on oil and gas exports.
The state agriculture programme includes spending more than RUB300bn ($4.6bn) in 2019. “The federal project for support of agricultural exports encom- passes provision of RUB406.8bn ($6.2bn) in the next six years. We also worked out additional measures of state support for small farms, and we will allocate more than RUB37bn on that until 2024,” he said.
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