Measures to promote agricultural cooperation are taken in Bashkiria

In 2014, the Ministry of Agriculture of Bashkortostan plans to raise funds through participation in the federal target program "Development of Agricultural Cooperatives of Russia".

The program provides grants to the formation and strengthening of production and technical facilities for the processing, transportation and storage of agricultural products.

As the Ministry representatives explain, projects to be implemented according to the following scheme: 70 percent - state funds, the rest - cooperative funds, own funds of united farmers.

“Also we are working now on the issue of purchasing surplus production from the population, in particular, milk and vegetables. A grant program is being developed for the acquisition of special equipment (milk tankers and vans), milk cooling tanks and equipment for vegetables processing - washing, drying, sorting,” the Minister of Agriculture RB Nikolay Kovalenko said at the Republican Congress of the Union of Agricultural Producers.

As it was previously reported, a major project of wholesale distribution centre construction should solve the problem of agricultural products marketing. Currently, the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the State Committee RB for Trade and Consumer Protection is seeking for investors for this project.

To date, the republic has more than 5.3 thousand (peasant) farms. Only in the last three years over one thousand of new peasant farms were created in Bashkortostan.

In 2013, local farmers produced about 380 thousand tons of grain, or 21.6 percent of total grain produced, about 230 thousand tons (13.2 percent) of sugar beet, about 55 thousand tons (22 percent) of sunflower.

Animal husbandry has an annual increase in number of cattle (by 10.4 percent, compared with 2012), sheep and goats (by 3.6 percent), poultry (by 2 percent).