Food Industry in Russia: Development and Problems

There is one need in man, which always and in all conditions needs to be satisfied. Whatever you are, whatever social position you take, without good, good-quality food you can not do. It's no wonder that for a long time the food industry in one form or another has been the basis of the economy of many states.

Our country is no exception. It must be said that Russia's food industry has always been quite developed, since our state has almost always been an agricultural power. The received raw materials had to be processed for later storage or marketing, so that the corresponding branch of the national economy developed rapidly. In addition, Russia practically did not have a single peaceful age, so it was necessary to take care of supplying the army with quality foodstuffs all the time.

Brief historical digression

The first blow to the food industry in Russia was during the First World War, and the gloomy time of the Civil War finally undermined it. Compared with 1900, the production of food dropped five times at once. However, by 1927 the industry had almost completely recovered to its former level, but it was not able to satisfy the needs of the young country.

Industrialization of the state, a sharp increase in construction and the expansion of production in all corners of the USSR led to the need for a radical revision of the food industry, which existed up to that time. The urgency of this was the higher, the more high-quality raw materials began to be given collectivized agricultural cooperatives and collective farms. Approximately in the same years, the statistical departments derived the average figures of the needs of people of various professions in nutrients and in certain categories of products.

In the course of the Patriotic War of 1941-45, practically all of Russia's food industry, located in the central parts of the country, was again destroyed. The only thing that saved the situation was the timely evacuation of most of the enterprises to the East. By the way, it is due to this circumstance that in Kazakhstan today there is an advanced food industry in the region.

It should be noted that the day of the food industry in Russia, which is celebrated on October 19, was, in many ways, created in memory of the heroic labor of the workers in the industry, which provided continuous supplies of food to the rear and to the front.

Postwar problems

After five years, many branches of the national economy, including the food industry, were restored at the previous, pre-war level. But we have already said that, before, the industry could no longer meet the increased needs of a rapidly growing and developing country. In fact, the situation was even worse. The fact is that the population of rural areas was fed almost exclusively by the products that were grown in the garden. Practically, people did not buy industrial products.

At that time the country urgently needed as many workers as possible. The natural "candidates" for their role were just the peasants. That's only to transport them to the city was impossible, because in this case the number of people who consumed food, could rapidly increase. Of course, this situation could lead to hunger. It was urgently needed to reorient the industry to new standards. Invaluable assistance was provided by the main institutes of the food industry in Russia (Moscow, Kuban), whose specialists developed many programs for the re-equipment of the industry.

Unfortunately, on the ground the approach to solving this problem was chosen completely incorrect. Collective farmers were forbidden to keep livestock in private households, or they limited their number legislatively. It was assumed that in this case labor productivity will increase greatly. Of course, in order to achieve this goal, the norms of production output constantly increased. As for crop production, the authorities decided to start plowing black soil in Kazakhstan to increase grain harvesting.

It was then that it turned out that for the normal exploitation of plowed land chronically there are not enough qualified specialists. In fact, it turned out that only 40% of the entire cultivated area could be used in accordance with agricultural norms. Because of this, soil fertility fell rapidly, which, in the end, led to the need to purchase grain abroad.

Restructuring

By the beginning of the 1990s, Russia's food industry was far from the best. Because of the legendary mismanagement, the national economy lost up to 40% of finished products and valuable raw materials. Between 1970 and 1986, the medical and physiological supplies of many professions were constantly declining. In fact, only representatives of the party elite, military men, sailors, pilots and cosmonauts were eating normally.

At the beginning of 1991, the population's needs for vegetables, bread and pasta were covered by about 80-90%. As for sugar, fat, meat, milk and poultry, this figure was barely 55-60% at best. Who is not familiar with the queue for "scarce" products that became one of the signs of the late USSR? All the institutes of the food industry in Russia have experienced a catastrophic personnel shortage for those years, the level of training of the specialists they graduated rapidly.

After 1991, a rapid decline in total production began. Some branches of the food industry reduced output by 60%. The state of the market rapidly deteriorated because of the fact that potential buyers simply did not have the means to purchase products of domestic producers. All this took place against the backdrop of a powerful flow of cheap imported goods, which flooded the river through the open borders. Every production of the food industry in Russia in those years was simply forced to resort to unprofitable dumping, designed to preserve at least some interest of buyers to their products.

The state of the technical component of the industry

By the beginning of the 1990s, everything was very sad in this area. Physically, a lot of equipment is already outdated by half, and as for moral "wear and tear", it was completely beyond the bounds. The growing technological backwardness and financial instability of the economy exacerbated the already far from brilliant position of the domestic food industry.

As a result, Russian production was not able to provide its own population with food. The situation was all the more serious, the more often the bodies of sanitary-epidemiological services discovered the complete inconsistency of many imported goods even to the most basic standards. The leg with salmonella is far from the most terrible of what was then found. Naturally, the raw material of this quality was received by the Russian food industry. 2014 is much better in this respect, our sanitary and epidemiological control bodies work much more intensively.

Components of the food industry in Russia

One of the main pillars of this industry in our country (and throughout the world) is livestock. We will discuss it now. This branch of the national economy provides at least 60% of valuable raw materials from which domestic food products are produced. Alas, but in Russia there are few regions in which nature allows the breeding of beef cattle. One of them is the Caucasus. The social situation there is such that the restoration of the industry (relative) has become possible only in recent years.

Accordingly, all the recent time, not less than 60% of the needs of the country's population in the same beef was covered exclusively by imported supplies, because of which the food industry in Russia suffers. 2014 was marked by the introduction of Western sanctions. Strangely enough, it is the latter circumstance that allows us to hope for the prudence of the authorities, which, perhaps, will nevertheless pay attention to their own producers.

Cattle breeding

In our country is developed in two directions: meat and milk and dairy cattle. It is developed only in the European part of Russia, where the climate and fodder base make production quite profitable.

Domestic dairy products in recent years is quite high quality. The problem is a small amount of subsidies, which the state sends to the industry. Theoretically this is due to our country's accession to the WTO, but Germany and France do not prevent this from supporting their own farmers. To date, there is a paradoxical situation: despite the fact that the country is able to provide at least 89% of the demand for dairy products on its own, we continue to buy it abroad.

Because of this, the food industry in Russia suffers greatly. The report of industry experts for the past year shows that the country can fully fully provide its own milk supply in five to seven years. Instead, domestic producers are again left without state orders and financing.

As for beef, the situation here is even sadder. The fact is that in our country there is practically no dairy cattle breeding as such. All the meat of domestic origin, which appears on the shelves of our stores - from dairy breeds of cattle. It has such low food characteristics that in the food industry this raw material is used exclusively as an additive to pork. It is impossible to organize the production of full-fledged steaks or sausages from it, and in fact these products could contribute to a significant increase in the incomes of Russian producers of products.

Pig farming

Proceeding from all the above, it can be concluded that at least 2/3 of all the demand for meat raw materials is covered by pig production. Domestic production from it is of excellent quality and always has a high demand among consumers. The problem is that pork is a fairly expensive product, as it requires large subsidies for the construction of large pig-breeding complexes. The realities are such that the state does not hurry to invest in them, preferring to finance foreign producers. At that time, Russia's own food and processing industry suffers from a chronic shortage of funds.

Industries of food industry in Russia

And now we will consider the main branches of the food industry in Russia. At the core of the principle of placing processing enterprises on the territory of the country are immediately two factors: raw materials and consumer. In most cases, when building new enterprises, they are guided precisely by the availability of raw materials, since it requires a lot when producing food products. When transporting to more or less long distances, huge costs are required to ensure its safety, and therefore production under such conditions becomes simply unprofitable.

Depending on the combination of all these factors, experts identify three branches of the food industry that are common in Russia:

• The sources of raw materials tend to be the production of milk, starch and molasses, sugar and vegetable oil, vegetable preserves. For example, we have sugar production only in the Caucasus and Central Black Earth regions, since hundreds of thousands of tons of raw materials, from which only a few dozens of tons of finished products come out, are simply unprofitable and stupid. There are also the largest enterprises of the food industry in Russia (ASTON, "Yug Rusi"), which produce vegetable oil.
• On the contrary, the production of the bakery industry can be found throughout the country. This allows us to refer it to the consumer food industry. Grain is relatively easy to transport, the output of finished products from raw materials is quite large.
• Mixed industries: milling and meat. Primary processing of raw materials is carried out in close proximity to the places of its development, and then semi-finished products are sent to the places of their final processing. An ideal example is a fish. Frozen it is carried out even on fishing trawlers. Salted herring, for example, is produced even in Udmurtia, from which to the nearest sea is not one thousand kilometers.

Other characteristics of the industry

In general, the domestic food industry includes hundreds of production cycles that are highly complex. The most important are the basic varieties. Their products are primary raw materials for more complex industries. These include: milling industry, the production of raw sugar, the production of milk with its subsequent cooling.

All the enterprises of the food industry in Russia, specializing in the production of fish or slaughtering cattle, can be considered as such. But here we already have to make distinctions between the branches: the same beef can immediately go to the store shelves, and can be used for the production of sausages, meat bread, etc. It is the latter processes that are considered to be the most important, as the products obtained as a result of their production bring The lion's share of profit to the manufacturer.

Important production features

The food industry in our country alone meets the needs of millions of consumers. This is due to a huge variety of companies, some of which have been on the market for more than a hundred years (Nestle, for example). The peculiarity of this industry is that it is necessary to constantly find some new tastes and forms of output, since consumers need to be supported. It is for the latter reason that the modern food industry is interested in the invention of a new packaging and the ways of its design.

Simply put, the food industry, not only in our country, but also abroad, gives jobs to thousands of people engaged in the production of glass, paper, plastic and metal packaging. In many respects this determines the raw material character of the location of the enterprises of the industry: the same beer is best bottled in the immediate vicinity of factories where plastic and glass bottles are produced. Carry them across half the country - it's expensive.

The main costs of the food industry

If we talk about the profitability of this type of production, then the considerable expenses of the food industry of Russia are due to the need to purchase modern filling lines and machines, the prices for which are not particularly democratic. Very high costs for professional printing packaging. Add to this payments to designers, marketers, the cost of certification and promotion of their products. Thus, the modern food industry - the industry is very, very costly.

The main problems of the food industry in our country

In general, we have already spoken about many of them. Thus, the development of the food industry in Russia is greatly complicated because of the almost total lack of state support for the industry. The costs for setting up production are many (see above), taxes - even more, and there is no real interest of the first persons of the state in ensuring their own self-sufficiency of the country.

Do not forget that in the industry there are several major players that control the food market practically all over the world. These companies are known to everyone: Nestle, Coca-Cola, Unilever and others. So, practically all the sparkling water is produced in factories whose shares belong to Coca-Cola. The same is true of the situation with chocolate: even when buying Russian sweets, you are sponsoring the Swiss "Nestle".

Of course, these companies of the Russian food industry are, in a certain sense, profitable, since they pay considerable taxes to the federal budget. The reverse side of the coin is that only domestic production of carbonated water is almost completely killed, as it is simply impossible for small companies to compete with such "whales" of the world industry. Here are the main problems of the food industry in Russia.