Gardeners are asking the state to compensate them for direct costs for the lost harvest
At a meeting with members of the government, Vladimir Putin instructed “to take measures to prevent jumps in apple prices due to problems among farmers » The interest of the head of state in the situation with a specific product is clearly not accidental. It is clear that as a result of the May frosts, about 1% of crops in Russia were destroyed. In some regions of the country, the weather disaster hit apple trees especially hard: both the ovaries and the trees themselves died. Our shopping raid shows that the president's concerns about rising prices for these fruits are justified.
“In April, I bought Golden for 109 rubles per kilo,” sighs an elderly visitor in the supermarket. — Now they are 140 rubles. And “seven” also went up in price by 40 percent…
The selection of apples in the supermarket is small. Seasonal fruits cost from 110 rubles per kilogram, although even earlier, buyers say, they were 60. The so-called non-budget fruits like “Granny Smith” cost 140-150.
Older people crowd around the counter in search of the varieties of their youth: «white filling» and «600-gram Antonovka». The department manager just throws up his hands: what, have you fallen from the moon, they've been gone for a long time!
The farmers themselves call the situation with apples this year nothing less than a catastrophe.
Judging by how, at the last meeting with the government, Vladimir Putin corrosively asked questions to the new Minister of Agriculture — about import supplies, planting new gardens, and so on, he recalled a similar story with the prices of chicken eggs last year. When the Ministry of Agriculture dragged its feet with foreign purchases of goods until the last minute. And only after eggs rose in price by 63%, the department began to conclude contracts with Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkey and some other countries.
Now the situation with apples is no less alarming. Due to the May frosts, which damaged more than 13.5 thousand hectares of perennial fruit and berry plantations, the Ministry of Agriculture has reduced the apple harvest forecast for this year to 1.5 million tons, said Minister of Agriculture Oksana Lut.
As the minister reported, 1.7 million tons of apples were harvested last year. «The target for this year was 1.8 million tons, even more. But, unfortunately, frosts affected it. And apples are the main type of product affected by frosts. Therefore, we are reducing the forecast to 1.5 million tons,» she said.
The minister, who held the position of first deputy in the Ministry of Agriculture in the previous government, apparently also remembers the sad experience with eggs. In any case, she said that work on the issue of supplying apples from abroad has already begun. “We started doing this in advance so that it would not affect the price situation in any way,” Lut clarified. According to her, an increase in imports from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Serbia is possible, plus Iran and Turkey are “in reserve”, which also produce large volumes of apples.
Meanwhile, according to Rusprodsoyuz, as of May 27, average prices for apples in the country were about 150 rubles per kilogram. Over the past week they grew by 2.1%, and compared to last year by 25.8%.
Will the authorities be able to make up for the loss of the apple harvest and bring down prices for this product? According to the president of the country's Gardeners' Association, Doctor of Agricultural Sciences Igor Mukhanin, the situation in this regard is not simple: frosts killed apple trees in almost the entire central zone of Russia, which produce about 15-16% of the total gross harvest.
— Hot weather in early April caused a premature start to the growing season. And when they bloomed, at the very peak, several waves of frost hit. Over the past 15 years, we have increased apple production every year,” he continues. — It was planned that in 5 years we would completely replace imports. And here is such a climate blow to the central zone: from the Rostov region to Tatarstan. Productivity will fall and prices will rise accordingly.
— Everything will depend on consumers. If people buy apples for 250 rubles per kilogram, then that’s what they will cost. And even more! And if they start passing by, the prices will drop — to 200 or 150 rubles.
— Compensation for direct costs of growing crops for farms that suffered the most. We need funds for next year, the gardens need to be looked after in any case, and you can’t put workers on farms where there won’t be a single apple on the street…
— In general I can’t say, but for a small farm, 50 hectares, it’s about 20 million rubles. And in Russia there are many farms with one thousand or two thousand hectares.
— To start intensive gardens, there is no problem with this. Money from the budget is allocated carefully. But when they begin to bear fruit, after 2 years, they need containers, storage and much more. A storage facility for 1000 tons of apples costs 60 million rubles. This is where problems arise with the maintenance of gardens.
— There are fears that such volumes will not be very large. There are not very many “extra” apples in the world. The largest country in Europe for their cultivation is Poland; we bought its apples for re-export in Moldova or Serbia. But Poland also had May frosts, and it will also miss its harvest.