The head of the KFH, Ildar Sitdikov, told the National Agrarian Agency that he had written a corresponding letter to Minister Dmitry Patrushev.
In it, the farmer says that he has been growing greens and berries for ten years, but now the business has become unprofitable. Sitdikov owns more than 30 hectares of land, a multi-temperature warehouse and all the necessary equipment. Here is how the farmer himself commented to the ROSNG agency on the appeal to the MOA:
- We have a problem with salads due to the fact that Iran “flooded” our market with its imports. We can’t sell our salad at all. This is the situation throughout the country. Everyone involved in lettuce just plows the fields. Our losses are measured in millions of rubles. Imagine, in Moscow wholesale markets already packaged Iranian salad are sold at 35 rubles per kilogram, while our salad has only a cost of 50 rubles and it still needs to be delivered to Moscow. Our lettuce is more expensive because the seeds are very expensive, plus drip irrigation, and we don’t use herbicides and pay taxes. Another problem is the Polish blackcurrant, which is brought to us through Belarus under the guise of Chinese. Everything is obvious, because currants do not grow in China. This is too much competition for us. No one will let us into Europe with our goods, especially to Iran and China. Why do we let everyone in?
Alexander Gavrilenko, founder of the National Agrarian Agency:
Of course, there is the problem of cost and state support. I remember how in 2014 I interviewed the owner of a large agricultural holding, he complained that the authorities were asking him to start growing apples, but he did not want to. “We calculated that our apples will never be able to compete at cost with Polish fruits grown and already delivered to our border. The embargo on European imports could end at any moment, and what are we going to do with our multi-billion dollar investment in new gardens?” the businessman asked intelligently. In this case, we see almost the same thing, and this problem can be solved only by structural changes in state support.
