The Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation proposes to fix the concept of "farm products" at the legislative level. "Prime".
“In order to define the concept of “farm products”, we would propose to amend the law on the development of agriculture, with the premise that agricultural products, as well as products of primary and subsequent processing, which are produced by agricultural producers, are recognized as such if they are produced by enterprises that relate to micro and small businesses,” said Ksenia Shevelkina, Director of the Department for Rural Development of the Ministry, during a discussion in the Federation Council of additional mechanisms for marketing farm products.
Thus, she continued, it is supposed to protect big business from the possibility of using the concept of "farming" and names identical with it. And entrepreneurs who are farmers will be provided with a simplified opportunity to come with their products to retail chains - without such obstacles as “additional administrative regulations” and “without additional GOSTs, as previously proposed,” Shevelkina emphasized.
“In addition, we would, of course, propose that the existing competence centers that have been created in all regions be given the functions of consulting support for these issues, thereby stimulating the very sales that we are talking about,” she added.
Shevelkina stressed that the position of the ministry is to stimulate the sale of small agribusiness products, perhaps even to legislate the pre-emptive right to sell such products by the commodity producers themselves, and now there are already such pilot projects as part of the instructions of the head of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko.
“Of course, we worked with those participants in the pilot projects on the possibility of developing a legislative framework on this issue. The first of the areas that have been worked out is the feasibility of introducing the concept of “farm products” at the legislative level, Shevelkina concluded.