Organic Farming in Russia

One of the forums of the fair was devoted to the discussion of prospects in organic farming. In the course of the forum representative of the Department of Agro-Industrial Complex of the Moscow Oblast Duma, Mr. Michail Vereschak, Director of Non-Commercial Partnership on the Development of Organic and Bio-dynamic farming "AGROSOPHIA" and the administrator of the project on sustainable organic farming of RREC, Dr. Andrei Khodus, made presentations and answered questions. They provided information on the prospects of organic farming development in Russia.

Dr. Khodus mentioned that in accordance with the latest scientific data Russia became the biggest stabilizer of the biosphere of the Earth. According to the recent data of the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia chemical fertilizers are either not used, or used in very limited quantities. The average rate of the use of chemical fertilizers made up 8 kg/ha in 2003. In comparison with the beginning of the 90-ies about one third of all arable lands are not used. These lands are "resting" and they are being turned into environmentally balanced stock. This provides for very favorable prerequisites and advantages for the transition to organic farming

At present, special technical requirements regulating organic farming products are being considered by the Government of the Russian Federation. In case they are approved and adopted the first official standard on organic farming products will be introduced in Russia. It is expected that introduction of such a standard would provide for establishing a new and a very promising market of organic farming products. The Russian Regional Environmental Centre is the leading institution in developing these technical requirements. According to the conception of the authors a specific feature of the Requirements is their compliance with major standards on organic farming, determining "the rules of the game" in various markets of organic products: EC Directive 2092/91 "On Organic Farming and Corresponding Labelling of Agricultural Products and Foodstuff"; Technical Requirements "National Organic Farming Programme" of the USA; "Standards of Organic Production" of Japan, and, if possible, with the legal and regulatory base on organic farming in Switzerland and Australia. Major standards on organic farming have already been translated into Russian and, therefore, became available to all who wish to work in the given area.

The content of the presentation made by Dr. A. Khodus caused ambiguous reaction of the audience. According to him, “the audience understood that there was a break-through of knowledge” and this fact caused a certain concern in the Western Europe, that considers Russia as a potential rival for its producers. At the same time, emerging of a new filed of activity in Russia arouse interest of representatives of consulting firms and regulating institutions, as well as of potential importers of organic farming products.