A person has one need, which always and in any conditions needs to be satisfied. Whoever you are, whatever your social position , you can’t do without good, high-quality food. It is not surprising that for a long time the food industry in one form or another was the basis of the foundations of the economy of many states.
Our country is no exception. I must say that the food industry in Russia has always been quite developed, as our state has almost always been an agricultural power. The raw materials obtained had to be processed for subsequent storage or marketing, so that the corresponding sector of the national economy developed rapidly. In addition, Russia practically did not have a single peaceful century, so the supply of the army with quality food should be taken care of constantly.
A brief historical excursion
The food industry of Russia received the first blow during the First World War, and the gloomy time of the Civil War finally crippled it. Compared to 1900, food production declined immediately by five times. However, by 1927 the industry had almost completely recovered to its previous level, but it was not able to satisfy the needs of a young country.
The industrialization of the state, a sharp increase in construction and the deployment of production in all corners of the USSR led to the need for a radical revision of the food industry, which existed until then. The relevance of this was all the higher, the more high-quality raw materials began to give collectivized agricultural cooperatives and collective farms. Around the same years, the statistical departments deduced the average statistics of the needs of people of various professions for nutrients and certain categories of products.
During the Patriotic War of 1941-45, almost the entire food industry in Russia, located in the central parts of the state, was again destroyed. Only timely evacuation of most enterprises to the East saved the situation. By the way, precisely due to this circumstance in Kazakhstan today there is a leading food industry in that area.
It should be noted that the day of the food industry in Russia, which is celebrated on October 19, is precisely in many respects created in memory of the heroic work of industry workers who ensured continuous supply of food to the rear and to the front.
Post-war problems
After five years, many sectors of the economy, including the food industry, have been restored to their former, pre-war level. We just said that before the industry could no longer satisfy the increased needs of a rapidly growing and developing country. In fact, the situation was even worse. The fact is that the rural population was fed almost exclusively by the products that were grown in the garden. People practically did not buy industrial products.
At that time, the country urgently needed as many workers as possible. Peasants were just the natural “candidates” for their role. But it was impossible to transport them to the cities, since in this case the number of people who consumed food could rapidly increase. Of course, this situation could lead to hunger. It was urgent to reorient the industry to new standards. Invaluable help was provided by the main institutes of the food industry in Russia (Moscow, Kuban), whose specialists developed many programs for re-equipping the industry.
Unfortunately, the local approach to solving this problem was chosen completely wrong. Collective farmers were forbidden to keep cattle in their personal farmsteads, or they were legally limited in number. It was assumed that in this case labor productivity will increase significantly. Of course, in order to achieve this goal, the standards of production output were constantly raised. As for crop production, in order to increase the collection of grain, the government decided to start plowing black soil in Kazakhstan.
It was then that it turned out that for the normal operation of the plowed lands, there were chronically not enough qualified specialists. In fact, it turned out that only 40% of the total cultivated area could be used in accordance with agricultural standards. Because of this, soil fertility quickly declined, which, in the end, led to the need to purchase grain abroad.
Restructuring
By the beginning of the 90s, the food industry in Russia was far from in the best condition. Due to the legendary mismanagement, the national economy lost up to 40% of finished products and valuable raw materials. In the period from 1970 to 1986, the medical and physiological supply of many professions was constantly decreasing. In fact, only representatives of the party elite, military, sailors, pilots and astronauts ate normally in this regard.
At the beginning of 1991, the needs of the population in vegetables, bread and pasta were covered by about 80-90%. As for sugar, lard, meat, milk and poultry, this figure was hardly 55-60% at best. Who doesn’t know the lineup for “scarce” products, which became one of the signs of the late USSR? All the institutes of the food industry in Russia of those years experienced catastrophic personnel shortages, and the level of training of specialists graduating from them was rapidly falling.
After 1991, a rapid decline in total production began. Some food industries have reduced output by 60%. Market conditions were rapidly deteriorating due to the fact that potential buyers simply did not have the means to buy products from domestic manufacturers. All this happened against the backdrop of a powerful stream of cheap imported goods that poured into the river through the opened borders. Each production of the food industry in Russia in those years was simply forced to resort to dumping that was disadvantageous for itself, which was designed to maintain at least some interest of buyers in their products.
The state of the technical component of the industry
By the beginning of the 90s, everything was very sad in this area too. Physically, a lot of equipment is already outdated by half, and as for moral “wear and tear,” it was completely outrageous. The growing technological backwardness and financial instability of the economy further aggravated the already not so brilliant position of the domestic food industry.
As a result, Russian production was not able to provide its own population with food. The situation was all the more serious, the more often the sanitary-epidemiological services found a complete discrepancy of many imported goods to even the most basic standards. Legs with salmonellosis is far from the worst of what was found then. Naturally, the food industry of Russia itself received raw materials of similar quality. The year 2014 is much better in this regard, our bodies of sanitary and epidemiological control work much more intensively.
Components of the food industry in Russia
One of the main pillars of this industry in our country (and throughout the world) is animal husbandry. We will discuss it now. This sector of the national economy provides at least 60% of the valuable raw materials from which domestic food products are produced. Alas, in Russia there are few regions in which nature makes it possible to raise beef cattle. One of them is the Caucasus. The social situation there is such that the restoration of the industry (relative) has become possible only in recent years.
Accordingly, all the recent time, at least 60% of the country's population’s needs for the same beef were covered exclusively by import supplies, because of which the food industry in Russia is suffering. 2014 was marked by the introduction of Western sanctions. Oddly enough, but it is the latter circumstance that allows us to hope for the prudence of the authorities, which, perhaps, nevertheless will pay attention to their own producers.
Cattle breeding
In our country it is developed in two directions: meat and dairy cattle breeding. It is developed only in the European part of Russia, where the climate and food supply make production quite profitable.
Domestic dairy products in recent years have a fairly high quality. The problem is the small amount of subsidies that the state sends to support the industry. Theoretically, this is due to the entry of our country into the WTO, but this fact does not prevent Germany and France from supporting their own farmers. To date, a paradoxical situation has developed: despite the fact that the country is able to provide at least 89% of the demand for dairy products on its own, we continue to purchase it abroad.
Because of this, the food industry in Russia is suffering greatly. A report by industry experts over the past year indicates that a country can reach full independent milk supply in five to seven years. Instead, domestic producers are again left without government orders and funding.
As for beef, the situation here is even sadder. The fact is that in our country there is practically no
dairy cattle breeding as such. All meat of domestic origin, which appears on the shelves of our stores - from dairy cattle. It has such low nutritional characteristics that in the food industry
this raw material is used exclusively as an additive to pork. It is impossible to organize the production of full-fledged steaks or sausages from it, and yet these products could contribute to a significant increase in the income of Russian food producers.
Pig breeding
Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that at least 2/3 of the total need for meat raw materials is covered by pig breeding. Domestic products from it are of excellent quality and are always in high demand among consumers. The problem is that pork is a rather expensive product, since large subsidies for the construction of large pig-breeding complexes are necessary for its production. The realities are such that the state is in no hurry to invest in them, preferring to finance foreign manufacturers. Russia's own food and processing industry at this time is experiencing a chronic lack of funds.
Food Industries in Russia
And now we will consider the main branches of the food industry in Russia. The principle of the location of processing enterprises in the country is based on two factors at once: raw materials and consumer. In most cases, the construction of new enterprises focuses on the availability of raw materials, since a lot of them are required for the production of food products. When transporting more or less long distances, huge costs are required to ensure its safety, and therefore production in such conditions becomes simply unprofitable.
Depending on the combination of all these factors, experts identify three sectors of the food industry that are common in Russia:
- The sources of raw materials gravitate production of milk, starch and molasses, sugar and vegetable oil, canned vegetables. For example, we have sugar production only in the Caucasus and Central Black Earth regions, since transporting somewhere hundreds of thousands of tons of raw materials, from which only a few tens of tons of finished products comes out, is simply unprofitable and stupid. The largest food industry enterprises of Russia (ASTON, "South of Russia"), which produce vegetable oil, are also located there.
- On the contrary, the production of the bakery industry can be found throughout the country. This allows us to attribute it to the consumer food industry. Grain is relatively easy to transport, the output of finished products from raw materials is quite large.
- Mixed industries: flour and meat. Primary processing of raw materials is carried out in the immediate vicinity of the places of their production, and then the semi-finished products are sent to the places of their final processing. A perfect example is fish. Its freezing is still carried out on fishing trawlers. Salted herring, for example, is released even in Udmurtia, from which there are more than one thousand kilometers from the nearest sea.
Other industry characteristics
In general, the domestic food industry includes hundreds of production cycles of high complexity. The most important are the base varieties. Their products are the primary raw material for more complex industries. Such productions include: the milling industry, the production of raw sugar, the production of milk with its subsequent cooling.
All the food industry enterprises of Russia specializing in the production of fish or slaughter of cattle can be ranked among them. But here we already have to make differences between sectors: the same beef can be immediately sent to store shelves, and can be used for the production of sausages, meat bread, etc. It is the latter processes that are considered the most important, since the products resulting from their implementation bring the lion's share of profit to the manufacturer.
Important manufacturing features
The food industry alone in our country meets the needs of millions of consumers. This is due to the huge variety of companies, some of which have been on the market for more than a hundred years (Nestle, for example). The peculiarity of this industry is that it is necessary to constantly find some new tastes and forms of release, as consumers need to be supported by interest. It is for the latter reason that the modern food industry is interested in inventing new containers and methods for its design.
Simply put, the food industry, not only in our country, but also abroad, employs thousands of people involved in the production of glass, paper, plastic and metal packaging. In many respects, this determines the raw material nature of the location of the industry enterprises: the same beer is best dispensed in the immediate vicinity of the factories where plastic and glass bottles are produced. Carrying them across half the country is a costly affair.
The main costs of the food industry
If we talk about the profitability of this kind of production, then the food industry of Russia incurs considerable costs because of the need to purchase modern packaging lines and machines, the prices of which are not very democratic. The costs for professional printing packaging are very high. Add to this the payments to designers, marketers, the costs of certification and the promotion of your products. Thus, the modern food industry is a very, very expensive industry.
The main problems of the food industry in our country
In general, we have already talked about many of them. Thus, the development of the food industry in Russia is greatly complicated due to the almost complete lack of government support for the industry. There are many costs for setting up production (see above), taxes are even higher, and there is no real interest of the state’s top officials in ensuring their own self-sufficiency in the country.
Do not forget that there are several major players in the industry who control the food product market almost all over the world. Everyone knows these companies: Nestle, Coca-Cola, Unilever and others. So, almost all sparkling water is produced at plants whose shares are owned by Coca-Cola. The same is true in the situation with chocolate: even buying domestic sweets, you sponsor the Swiss Nestle.
Of course, these companies in the food industry in Russia are in a certain sense profitable, since they pay considerable taxes to the federal budget. The flip side of the coin is that domestic production of sparkling water alone is almost completely killed, as it is simply unrealistic for small companies to compete with such “whales” of the world industry. These are the main problems of the food industry in Russia.