December 17, 2009

Will Russia be pork-sufficient by 2020?

During the next two years, Russia plans to invest more than RUB93.6 billion (US$3.08 billion) to develop the domestic pig breeding industry.

Analysts believe that this will not only increase the production of pork in the country by 30% compared to 2008, but will allow the country to stop all pork imports by 2020.

Since 1992, pork production in Russia has declined by 33% to 1.87 million tonnes in 2007. Last year, it increased to 2.04 million tonnes, while this year the production will reach 2.2 million tonnes.

According to the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, the volume of domestic pork production will amount to 2.7 million tonnes by 2012, while the share of imports will be reduced to 14%. Also, these figures are expected to increase up to 3.96 million tonnes by 2020, which is two times higher than in 2007. Launching some innovative technologies in the Russian pork breeding industry may allow the increase of the production to 5.6 million tonnes of pork a year.

In addition the total Russian pig herd should reach 23.3 million head (16.2 million in 2008) by 2012, and is expected to increase to 35-45 million heads by 2020. The Russian Ministry of Agriculture believes that these measures will fully meet the domestic demand for pork by 2012.

The realisation of such projects will run through the development of several programmes including breeding of pigs of high-yield breeds, the establishment of modern breeding and genetic centres, as well as modern abattoirs and logistics infrastructure.