December 13, 2006

Russia to produce more animal products and rapeseed

Poultry production within Russia is showing the fastest growth rate at 15-17 percent per year, Russian deputy agriculture minister Sergey Mitin said at a recent Eurotier exhibition.

Russia's poultry industry is the tenth largest in the world, compared with eighth place on cattle and ninth on pigs.

Its meat output is divided currently between 36 percent beef and 28 percent each for pork and poultry meat.

Russia hopes to produce 2 percent more meat and 4.5 percent more milk in the next two years, with about 15 billion roubles (US$570 million) in the budget for that purpose and up to 80 billion roubles (US$3 billion) available for capital projects.

Mitin also revealed an immediate target to double the area of land cultivated for rapeseed to convert into biodiesel, which doubled from 250,000 hectares to 500,000 hectares in recent years, he remarked.

Now the government hopes again to double that to one million hectares.