Funding for scientific research in the field of agriculture has more than doubled since 2013, amounting to almost 2021 billion rubles in 15. This is reported by TASS with reference to the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Valery Falkov. He announced this during a meeting of the Federation Council Committee on Agrarian Food Policy and Environmental Management.
“Starting from 2013, a lot of systematic work has been unfolding, and we believe that its first stage has been completed. As part of this stage, including in essence, the transformation of the research and development sector in the field of agriculture and the mobilization of resources to ensure the country's food security was carried out. As a result, this approach ensured an annual increase in budget funding for research institutes (RIs) in the field of agriculture from 6,6 billion to 14,9 billion rubles in 2021, and in 2022 this figure will be even higher,” said Falkov.
Over the years, it has also been possible to maintain human resources in the field of agricultural research. Thus, almost 10 thousand scientific employees work in the region. Of these, 5,2 thousand are candidates of science, 1,8 thousand are doctors of science, and the number of young scientists under the age of 39 is 4,3 thousand people.
According to Falkov, there is a gap between real scientific achievements, the results of the activities of research institutes and agricultural producers who do not understand what scientists have done and how they can work with it.
“Therefore, we consider it important this year, on the basis of leading scientific centers, to launch a whole system of retraining and advanced training courses for both scientific, teaching staff of universities, and agronomists, and those who are faced with the results of selection and seed production, agricultural producers. Simply put, this is one of the elements of marketing promotion,” the minister added.