OREANDA-NEWS.  February 1, 2012.  Vladimir Putin's opening remarks: Good afternoon, colleagues. Our meeting today is devoted to livestock farming, to the development of this branch which, without exaggeration, is one of the key areas in agriculture. A lot of things depend on its stability: domestic market saturation, the well-being of tens of thousands of people working in this industry. I would like to remind you that we discussed this issue about a year ago, just over a year ago, in Rostov-on-Don, as I recall. Importantly, even in those conditions, the difficult conditions of last year, we talked about positive trends in this industry. It is important that they are sustainable. It should be sufficient to point out that not only have we practically met the domestic demand for poultry (of which you are well aware), but we are even beginning to gain on foreign markets. Pig farming has also achieved very good indicators.

Incidentally, these are several of the leading producers of meat of all types: the Belgorod, Voronezh, Moscow, Leningrad, Rostov, Saratov and Chelyabinsk Regions, as well as the Stavropol Territory, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Krasnodar Territory and the Altai Territory. In 2012, cattle and poultry production is expected to reach 11.6 million tonnes on the basis of live weight, which is 660,000 tonnes or 6% more than in 2011. Moreover, the year 2011 saw a 3.7% increase against 2010; in other words, we are maintaining a positive trend.

Of course, all this is thanks to the hard work and consistent efforts that above all, you and those working in livestock farming have made in recent years. Of course, this is the result of work as part of the national Agro-Industrial Complex development project: as well as special programmes on beef and dairy farming, poultry farming, pig farming, and development of the processing infrastructure.

In order to support producers, we are employing measures of customs and tariff regulation, and we are allocating considerable funds from the federal and regional budgets. As a result, we have managed to amass substantial investment and credit resources. The majority of this was spent on development projects, on the creation of new jobs, construction and modernisation of some 3,500 farms and other facilities using modern technology. Total investment in these projects between 2006 and 2011 amounted to 576 billion roubles. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in this period, the federal budget interest rate subsidy totalled 120 billion roubles.

Meanwhile, despite state support, one branch of cattle farming requires further attention, as it remains problematic. This is beef farming and processing and dairy farming. I will cite some figures that are not exactly pleasant. Naturally, you have a general concept of the trends, but I do not know whether you are familiar with the summary of all these figures. In 1990, Russia produced 55.7 million tonnes of milk and in 2011, only 31.7 million tonnes, meaning Russia lost 24 million tonnes in twenty years. It's clear that this was caused by high imports in previous years, including in connection with the dumping of powdered milk. Naturally, this powder certainly undermined the economics of this branch.

Of course, it is necessary to take into account the extreme weather conditions of 2009 and 2010 and the subsequent shortage of feed. But in general, there are quite evident system-wide problems that we can and must discuss today. You know that from the federal budget we allocated additional funds, 5 billion roubles last year, to those farms that saved their livestock.