"Russia has enough staple foods for coming weeks"

Now that Russia has put an import ban on agricultural products and food from several Western countries, the Russian government wants to increase financial support for the domestic agricultural sector, German website aiz.info reports. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the responsible cabinet members to develop changes to the national development plan for the years 2013 until 2020, until the end of September. This will have to decrease reliance on import for products on the sanction list, the federal press service in Moscow reported.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, Russia has enough staple foods for the coming weeks. After that, new suppliers will have to take care of supplies. The country's reliance on imports, they say, fluctuates from 4% for potatoes to 30% for beef. For dairy produce, the import share is around 20%, for pork 20% as well, and for poultry around 10%. For fruit and vegetables, domestic production could be increased relatively quickly, but for meat they'll have to rely on foreign partners for a while longer, Dvorkovich says.

Going by the figures recently published by the 'Leibniz-Institut für Agrarentwicklung in Transformationsökonomien' (IAMO), reliance on foreign suppliers could be somewhat larger than Moscow officially admits, however. According to the IAMO, Russia imports nearly 50% of its food. In 2013, the import value was around 40 billion US dollars (around 29.9 billion Euro).

"Dozens of countries are currently lining up to offer Moscow their agricultural produce. Our ministry is checking their range of products daily," says Nikolay Fyodorov, the Russian Minister of Agriculture. Fyodorov mentioned Turkey, Iran, Israel, Morocco, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil in this regard. Turkey and Egypt in particular will benefit from the Russian import ban.