January 5, 2010

Russia to inject more funds into local beef industry

The Russian beef industry will receive large government financial incentives for development for the next three years.

These incentives will be implemented through a series of new programmes run by the Russian Ministry of Agriculture for beef cattle development. As a result, the number of beef cattle is expected to almost double by 2012.

According to analysts, the Russian beef and livestock sector has long been considered a risky investment, because of a lack of technology and human resources to improve efficiencies.

In addition, only 1.5% of the total herd is currently composed of beef cattle, much lower than the 90% of beef breeds in Australia and 80% in the US. Beef production is also restrained due to Russia's low average carcass weights of 169 kg per head.

The programme will focus on expanding beef cattle processing capacity with improved technology, one of the main obstacles for the industry in recent years.