Gross harvest of potatoes in farms in 2020 may reach 8 million tons This forecast on the webinar "Five keys to successful potato production", organized by the company "Syngenta", gave the chief of staff of the Potato Union, Tatyana Gubina. Now the potatoes are planted on almost 260 hectares, or 84% of the forecast area.

Dynamics of commodity of potato in the main growing regions for the period 2007-2019 years was negative. For example, in the Belgorod region for the past 12 years area has decreased from 4.7 million ha to 1.3 million ha in the Republic of Tatarstan, from 11.4 thousand hectares to 4.7 million hectares in the Leningrad region — from 7.3 hectares to 2.4 hectares in the Moscow region — from 16.3 thousand ha to 12.2 ha, said Gubin.

The impact on the domestic market continues to provide imported products. And in the last couple of years, foreign potatoes appears on the shelves of all early in December, draws attention to it. Thus the pressure on prices and reduced the competitiveness of Russian products. In the first quarter of this year the volume of import of potatoes has exceeded 44,15 thousand tons. the Main supplier is Egypt. In January-March 2020 the country sent to Russia more than 41 thousand tons of potatoes. The average price of foreign products in the first three months amounted to of $0.39/kg.

At the same time increasing the export of potatoes. If 2014 had been exported only 37 thousand tons of domestic potatoes (36 thousand tons from this amount purchased Azerbaijan), then in 2019 — 289 thousand t and the main buyer is now Georgia, with the volume of purchases in Russia 160 thousand tons at the end of last year. Another 85 thousand tons were exported to Azerbaijan. Also among importers of Russian potatoes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Serbia and other countries. In just the last six years, domestic companies exported over 1 million tons of potatoes. The average price of supply amounted to just $0.11/kg, Gubina know. "An important decision that will help to further export development is the addition of potatoes to the list of agricultural products, allowed for transport by rail from Siberia and the Urals to the far East at a discount," she added.

From the negative side of 2020, Tatyana Gubina highlighted the current economic situation and the influence of the epidemiological situation. The main victim here are the processors of potatoes. Many of them even had to suspend production as the demand from the HoReCa sector due to the country introduced restrictions fell. So, at the end of April it became known about a suspension of work of factory for the production of fries of the company "Belaya dacha".