Russian Government Committed to Increase Beef Production

The Russian government has recently reinforced its commitment to increase domestic beef production for the next three years, as beef production has fallen 31% over the last decade. The decline has been the result of low profitability for the industry compared to other protein enterprises.

The government will allocate around 4.5 billion roubles (around A$170 million) this year to develop the cattle breeding industry. Almost two thirds of these funds will co-finance regional development programmes for beef production.

In recent years, lower domestic beef supply in Russia has resulted in a larger dependency on beef imports. However, total beef imports for the calendar year to September 2009 fell 29% year-on-year, to 428,000 tonnes swt, as local consumers shift to cheaper protein sources, and importers and processors struggle with volatile economic conditions.

Although the government has developed programmes to increase beef production in recent years and raised import quotas to limit imports and stimulate local production, domestic beef production has failed to recover. The United States Department of Agriculture forecasts a 2% fall in Russia's beef production for 2010, to 1.27 million tonnes cwt