Marat Akhmetov: ‘For some reason, we get used to good numbers very quickly’

“15 billion rubles were allocated from the budgets of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tatarstan to agriculture”

The vice speaker of the State Council of Tatarstan held a press conference on supporting the countryside in the midst of the harvest season and chose not the parquet halls of parliament but Yelmay dairy farm in Vysokaya Gora District.

“In general, there are few flat places in Tatarstan. Here is a mountain, there is a mountain, and in the middle of Kukmor,” joked Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Environment, Nature Management, Agro-Industrial and Food Policy Takhir Khadeyev speaking about the difficult weather conditions for the development of agriculture in Tatarstan.

However, this did not prevent the republic from breaking out into the leaders of the Russian Federation in terms of the pace of development of the Agro-Industrial Complex in the life-changing 20 years. Tatarstan has reached an annual milk production of 2 million tonnes, or 6% of the total Russian volume, and is fully self-sufficient in livestock products. For example, Yelmay processes 400,000 tonnes of milk per year, and purchases 650 tonnes of milk per day. According to the Tatarstan Ministry of Agriculture, the region grows about 900,000 head of cattle, over 480,000 pigs, about 320,000 sheep and goats and almost 20 million poultry.

“For some reason, we get used to good numbers very quickly. But we have many regions of the Russian Federation that do not produce such a quantity of milk. Our neighbours buy half as much milk,” said Marat Akhmetov emphasising that the difficulty is that milk has to be bought literally in buckets from private farms. True, the republican authorities help the production develop.

Last year, the agricultural consumer cooperative received republican grants for 30 million rubles to modernise production.

“If they had not been there, the new lines would have been opened five years later,” head of the cooperative Lenar Shaikhutdinov told journalists. It later became known that last year 15 billion rubles were allocated from the budgets of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tatarstan to support agriculture.

“Before 2005, our country did not have any special priorities in the countryside”

Private investors direct much more to the development of the Agro-Industrial Complex. Thus, over the past five years, 146 billion rubles of private capital have entered the industry. “As a minister, I was criticised — 1.5 million hectares were given away to investors who were focused on making a profit, not on preserving the way of life. But then we didn’t know how much profit they would make, and we were saving arable land from destruction,” Marat Akhmetov admitted. The vice-speaker of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan is convinced that attracting private capital helped turn agriculture into a high-tech industry.

“Before 2005, our country did not have any special priorities in the countryside, so the problems accumulated at a slow pace. First of all, arable land was abandoned, livestock began to decrease, farms were closed. The market was spontaneous, although this should not have been allowed,” Marat Akhmetov recalled.

Then the republic took course for involving private investors.

“[Mintimer] Shaimiyev's position was this:Tatarstan cannot afford to abandon arable land. Even with the cost of a barrel of oil at $8, agriculture received assistance,” he noted. However, it has not yet been possible to completely get rid of abandoned lands.

“Although small, there are tails of ‘emptiness,’” said Marat Akhmetov. However, recently, developers have begun to use agricultural land.

According to Takhir Khadeyev, if earlier there were 131 hectares of arable land per farmer, now there are 86 hectares. Currently, the Agro-Industrial Complex of Tatarstan has 4.5 million hectares of agricultural land, of which 3.3 million hectares are arable land. The industry employs 930,000 people, or 7% of the working population. Revenue amounted to 590 billion in 2023, including the food industry. Its share in the GRP of the Republic of Tatarstan is 6.5%. Tatarstan is among the top five leading agricultural regions.

“There are problems with the smell, but perhaps, there is no great harm from it”

“You know, I have one unfulfilled dream, or rather two unfulfilled projects. We are talking about Chelny Broiler-2 and Kamsky Bekon-2 (Editor’s note: livestock complexes in Zakamye). We could not speak the same language with the population of these territories,” the vice-speaker of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan regrets. According to Marat Akhmetov, investment projects were stopped due to the problem with the smell, although there is no great harm from it, he believes.

Then he explained what the Agro-Industrial Complex due to the unpleasant smells. The launch of two investment projects would increase meat production by 330,000 tonnes per year with the current annual volume of 550,000 tonnes. In addition, 500,000 tonnes of grain grown in the republic remained unclaimed. “This would have led to the consumption of another half a million tonnes of grain, but, unfortunately, we were unable to sell it,” Marat Akhmetov lamented.

Grain prices continue to worry farmers. “There are many questions about grain sales, and farmers complain, but the farms themselves also need to be able to keep up with the market conditions, they need to be more mobile and efficient,” the vice speaker of the State Council advised. And he proposed quickly changing the structure of crop areas.

“Our oil extraction plant processes 1 million tonnes of sunflower. A plant with a similar capacity was built in Tolyatti. Avgust Group of Companies wants to implement a project for another 500,000 tonnes. Perhaps, the sunflower will not ripen in Predkamye Region, but it will do in Zakamye Region. So we could ease the tension in the grain sales market, and the ministry is working on this issue,” he concluded.

The problem of retaining young people in the village remains acute, and the countryside itself is aging rapidly.

“It is impossible to retain people in the countryside due to enthusiasm and natural romanticism,” Marat Akhmetov is sure. “If we do not increase profitability, then it is useless to do anything further,” he noted speaking about the need to increase wages. –“On the other hand, modernisation and the introduction of new technologies have made it possible to avoid an acute shortage. If we had not been able to modernise so much in agriculture in recent years, then Tatarstan's situation would have remained difficult. New equipment has arrived, now one person can work in one tractor instead of four, while with much greater productivity. The tractor driver receives a good salary, since only he needs to be paid, and not four workers.”