Amendments to the law "On development of agriculture" considered by the state Duma on Wednesday, November 19. According to them, the government will support not only producers, but also processors. This will affect 30 industries, 43 thousands of organizations, employing 1.3 million people.

As noted by the Chairman of the Duma agrarian Committee Nikolai Pankov, who spoke during the discussion of the amendments in the draft budget for 2015, which we have already passed the second reading, provided by the allocation of an additional 20 billion rubles. These funds will go to support import substitution".

At the same time, the MP stressed that the task of import substitution in agriculture depends on the solution of the problem of obsolete equipment for processing raw materials.

"Many organizations food and processing industry, with a weak material-technical base and storage infrastructure. This complicates the complex processing of raw materials and leads to additional losses, reducing the safety and quality of food products, "said Pankow.

As a vivid example to illustrate the situation in the sphere of processing, the head of the Duma Committee called the production process of such a socially important product, like bread.

"Today the country gathered 109, 9 million tons of grain, that is the raw potential is quite sufficient for the production of high-grade varieties of bread and meet consumer demand. However, poor technical equipment of enterprises will not make efficient use of these advances. And here's why: in grain production 30% of the capacity operated since 1917, and about 14% - pre-war building. About 50% of the flour mills and cereals plants are located in 30-40 years, use of imperfect technique, not automated, which makes it impossible to develop products with high quality indicators", - said Pankow.

State Duma deputies, included in the Committee on agrarian issues, believe that the bill will ensure the availability of credit resources for producers, which will help to attract additional investments for the construction, reconstruction, modernization of enterprises. Then in the milling industry by 2016 the volume of flour production will be increased to 10.1 million tons, will decrease the consumption of grain during the production of flour by 2%, 30 % reduced consumption of energy resources.

"Based on the fact that food and processing industry includes 30 industries, we support the targeting of government support, given the social importance of production", - concluded punks, noting that this bill has received 87 positive feedback from 47 subjects of the Federation.