Russia to leverage pork output with genetics

Russia plans to increase pork production through the use of modern genetics and breeding of hybrid pigs.

Modern genetics can provide a high meat yield, high growth rates during fattening, which ultimately allows profitability improvement even amid unfavourable market conditions.

Genetics provides 80% improvement of all indicators of productivity and therefore economic indicators in pig breeding industry.

Despite increasing production of pork in the country in recent years, Russia still lags behind such countries as Denmark and the Netherlands in terms of number of piglets per capita.

In addition, the country still faces an acute shortage of genetic centres for pig breeding, despite some recently announced ambitious projects supported by the state.

According to Russian analysts, Russia may completely stop imports of pork from abroad, in the case of increasing piglets production to at least 1-2 piglets per capita.

However, the rate at which Russia is cutting imports of pork is faster than that country is upping production in its quest for self-sufficiency, according to USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).

An attaché report said Russian pork production in 2010 will increase only 1.1% to 2.225 million tonnes while imports will drop 4.1% to 810,000 tonnes.

In February, Russia established a goal to reach 85% self-sufficiency in total meat and poultry production by 2020 but accelerated plans to achieve this goal within three to five years. Steep cuts have been made particularly in imports of pork and poultry.