Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 5 – “Import
substitution” may be the latest term to enter the vocabulary of Russians, but
experts say that Russian farmers will not be able to produce enough additional
food for the domestic market to compensate for the embargo the Kremlin has
imposed on imports unless that measure stays in place for at least five years.
While Russian farmers can produce
more of many things, Moscow experts say, they can do so only over the course of
months or years given the often large amount of time between deciding to
produce more and the achievement of that goal, according to Valery Kushchuk of “Profil”
(profile.ru/society/item/85482-fermery-ne-planiruyut-rasshiryat-proizvodstvo).
Farmers may be able to produce more
apples but only after a season and more meat but only after several years. And
because of the uncertainties of what will be the nature of the marketplace that
far in the future, few Russian farmers are prepared to take the risk to produce
more given that in many sectors they would not be competitive if imports were
resumed.
That is all the more the case, the
experts Kushchuk cites say, because most Russian retailers are now trying to
import food products from non-Western countries, an entirely reasonable step
given that the Kremlin’s decision was a sanction on the West rather than an
effort to support domestic producers.
But that has two consequences for
Russian consumers. On the one hand, quality control in many of the countries
which are now Russia’s suppliers is much worse than in the countries from which
it had imported food, thus putting consumers at risk of illness. And on the other, farmers have an additional
reason to adopt a wait-and-see attitude and not boost production.
No comments:
Post a Comment