Buryatia fears further rise in beef prices

Deputy Khurala urged to support the beef cattle breeding of the republic

At today's session of the Khural, deputy Bair Dorzhiev asked to pay attention to the problems of providing the republic with beef and mutton. 

- If RUSSIA   provides itself with pork and chicken and even exports it, then Russia imports it for beef. In 2020, imports amounted to about a billion dollars. In our republic, beef production in 2021 amounted to 16 thousand tons and 1.3 thousand tons of lamb (with consumption of 12 thousand tons of beef). In connection with recent events, the import of beef is difficult, and its price on the world market is also growing due to food inflation. 

Bair Dorzhiev believes that in the near future we may face not only a rise in prices for beef, but also a shortage of MEAT.  

- We have already faced an increase in the price of beef. I propose to correct 
program for the development of sheep and beef cattle breeding in Buryatia and increase funding for these programs. In 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation introduced subsidies in the amount of 30 rubles of live weight for the delivery of sheep to meat processing plants, and last year this doubled the number of sheep that were handed over to the meat processing plant. This year, we also increased funding for the sheep breeding program together with Ministry of Agriculture of Buryatia for 15 million rubles, but I think these funds are not enough. Therefore, I propose to increase funding for these programs. I also propose to resume the Republican Food Corporation, whose task is to maintain stability in the food market, create conditions for providing food products to social organizations and also 
financing of agricultural producers for the purchase of agricultural products and food, - said the deputy. 

According to him, a similar experience already exists, for example, in Tatarstan, where there is a reserve food fund. The same fund existed in our country in 1995. 

- We need to revive this tradition, but, of course, in a slightly different format. There are statistics on lamb, in 2007 we had 300 thousand livestock, and in 2021 everything remained at the same level, the livestock did not grow. In Soviet times, we had about 2 million heads. But in the 90s, we completely ate the entire livestock, which decreased by almost 10 times. To avoid such a situation, I believe that it is necessary to increase funding for these programs, summed up Bair Dorzhiev.