Russia: The Ministry of Agriculture is discussing import quotas for seeds of three crops

The Ministry of Agriculture is considering introducing import quotas on foreign-bred seeds for potatoes, sugar beets and rapeseed. Oksana Lut, the head of the ministry, spoke about this in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper. We are talking about foreign-bred seed material from unfriendly countries. The ministry has begun to calculate the optimal import volumes for the Russian market, after which it plans to declare them to the customs and tariff regulation commission. So far, despite the difficult geopolitical situation, hybrids whose breeding is not developed in Russia are still imported from three Western countries - Germany, the USA and France. At the same time, the minister noted that foreign suppliers of seed material are seriously increasing prices for their products. In her opinion, the transition to domestic breeding will significantly reduce the cost of seeds, for example, by half for certain crops. Lut also recalled that in 2022, Russia purchased seeds of only ...