Organic Farms Become a Winner in Putin’s Feud With the West
Boris Akimov’s cellphone, which quacks like a duck, started to sound like a whole flock soon after President Vladimir V. Putin imposed sweeping food sanctions barring many Western imports last August. Major Russian grocery chains, desperate to find new suppliers, tracked down Mr. Akimov, the founder of Russia’s fledgling farm-to-table movement, to ask urgent supply questions. How many chickens and eggs could he provide, they wanted to know, and could he deliver 100 tons of cheese, say, immediately.
“The main thing which the sanctions have already changed is in people’s minds — in government, in business and on the streets, they have started to think more about where their food comes from,” Mr. Akimov said in an interview in his new, homey restaurant in central Moscow, where the light fixtures are sawed-off milk cans painted red. “If the sanctions give a chance to develop local farmers, to develop sustainable agriculture, it is very good. But I am not sure it will happen.”
Пока наблюдается скорее рост цен, чем увеличение производства:
Prices for meat and poultry rose more than 18 percent through October, while dairy products were up by over 15 percent, according to the federal statistics agency, Rosstat.
“Russia cannot provide itself with dairy products, fish, vegetables and other types of food,” said Mikhail Anshakov, the head of the Society for the Protection of Consumer Rights, which calls for food sanctions to be rescinded. “Self-imposed sanctions under these circumstances were madness.”
Но для многих фермеров ситуация обнадеживающая:
Some farmers, however, have been slightly gleeful about their prospects under sanctions.
Justus Walker, an American immigrant farmer in Siberia, became a YouTube sensation for a short news clip showing him laughing at the thought that he could finally sell the mozzarella he produces because the cheaper Italian variety would no longer be available.