The food and food-processing industry under contemporary conditions.

摘要

The Russian food and food-processing industry embraces 18thin000 enterprises employing almost 1.5 million people, and accounting for 10-15% of the country's total industrial output. A major concern is the relative neglect of the processing sector. Whereas in 1991 in the USA dollar 1.3 was invested in processing for every dollar 1 invested in agriculture itself, thereby ensuring that no primary produce was lost, in Russia investment in processing has been so low that losses of primary produce not infrequently reached 20-30%, and the situation has deteriorated further in recent years. Brief accounts are given of the current situation in various branches of the food industry. In the meat sector, with about 820 enterprises, approx. 70% of domestically produced equipment is obsolescent, and only 8% of processes are automated; in the dairy sector, almost 1000 of the 2170 enterprises are using mainly (>70%) equipment built in the 1950-1960s; in the fruit and vegetable sector, only about 20% of gross output is processed; the confectionery industry has generally shown rapid growth, even though 40% of enterprises are in non-specialized buildings and almost 45% of the equipment is >10 years old; in the vegetable fats and oils sector, the level of utilization of capacity was about 80% in 1996, attributable to about 60% of equipment being outdated (most oil-producing plants were built before 1917); and in the sugar sector half the basic equipment is outdated, some being 80-100 years old. The level of imports is an additional problem. Although Russian food products are at least equal to foreign imports in quality, they cannot compete for variety and innovation. The overall result is an urgent need for domestic and foreign investments and for integration of the primaryproduction and processing sectors (currently at loggerheads).