For over twenty years the problem of ensuring the food security of Russia has been a topic of high-pitched discussions which became even more intense after the economic sanctions imposed by the USA and the Western-European countries and the counter-actions of Russian government. There are different opinions about possible solutions of this problem. The given article is dedicated to studying of certain issues regarding food safety provision in Russia at the present stage. The authors discuss various problems of import substitution in different sectors of agro-industry and present a positive experience of developing new production facilities. Following the results of the conducted study it becomes evident that, currently, there are certain reserves for import substitution in our country, which means that there are resources for solving the problems of food security.

Highlights:

► export food resources potential is a powerful non-military political instrument
► the agricultural material and technological base was especially devastated; the annual output of tractors has decreased 22 times and the production of many other types of agricultural machinery has simply ceased
► given the economic conditions, the impossibility of the country’s self-reliance as to the food provision was quite obvious, therefore, import reduction can cause serious social upheavals
► vast Russian territories plus modern agrarian technologies enable Russia to be self-dependent and provided with a sufficient amount of ecologically clean food products,
not letting intimidate itself with starvation
► the import substitution policy in the Russian agro-industrial sector and the state of Russia’s food security are closely related in the present time
► in Russia, meat is mainly produced in the Central, Volga and Siberian federal districts – in aggregate, they produce more than 2/3 of the total meat products produced in Russia
► the most promising direction providing gain in poultry meat production and product-line expansion is turkey breeding
► presently, there is a stable production growth in the Russian market of turkey against the background of the import volume reduction, i. e. an active import substitution process is taking place in the market
► on top of everything else, modern production equipment for young-stock breeding and adult turkey stock management, poultry slaughtering and advanced processing is currently manufactured in Russia
► there are certain difficulties with a hatchable egg that is weekly received into our hatchery from a Canadian company Cuddy Farms
► it can be concluded that the modern economic and political conditions become an important factor of the agriculture development