Congress of the cheese-makers is held on November 18

Oleg Sirota on his page in Facebook wrote an appeal to his colleagues cheese-makers to unite. The DairyNews publishes the post without any changes:

"Friends! Ahead there is a big step for import substitution. It is time for us (cheese-makers) to unite and move forward together! On 18 November we are going to the Congress. We want to work together to solve our main issues and problems:

1. The main problem of agriculture is marketing. Sanctions have certainly added us strength and have breathed new life into the Russian cheese-making, radically increased demand, but it is not a secret for anybody that mostly dealers earn and retail networks and not us are making money on our cheeses. We now have the chance to solve this problem. The last cheese fairs and festivals have shown that this is absolutely real and you support us in this. Yes, what can I say - we believed in ourselves. Nobody wants to reckon with us when we are separate, but together we are a power.

2. Cooperation. Nowadays the Russian people are very hard to agree with each other, but we will try and go this route. Our forefathers in the Russian Empire managed to come to an agreement with each other, which means we can do it as well. To solve our problems, we need to form cooperatives; we should at least start with marketing ones. It is necessary to create cooperative warehouses - this is especially important for farmers in remote regions (Altay, Siberia, the Caucasus, the Crimea). The State won't do it for us.

3. Of course an important question is the sanitary norms. Now the attitude to farmers and cheese-makers from the authorities on the ground is usually quite loyal – they can fine but for small amounts, unfortunately, there are exceptions. The issue has matured – our small farms and dairies need completely different regulations. Swiss ones will be the best, or at least German, the most stringent regulations in the world, but not those of Russia - they were written for large Soviet factories and huge farms. They cannot be implemented on small enterprises.

4. We need to raise the bar of domestic equipment in the dairy industry. We need to go the Chinese way - to promote the industry to high-quality reproduction of European equipment and reducing the cost. Strange but true - in Russia there are no manufacturers of food stainless steel (by the way, it can be the subject of startup).

5. Funding and loans. Unfortunately we still cannot work without loans even if we want. Many of us simply can’t get them under any interest. This is our common pain. We will be moving to the agreements with Rosselkhozbank and other banks for lending. This is especially true for hard cheeses - there money is frozen for a year or two, it is still without the construction of barns - there we need loans at low interest rates for ten-fifteen years... Thus, until we solve the problems with lending to farmers – there will be no Russian Parmesan.

6. In the future, it is necessary to work on vocational training and other issues; if there is time, we will discuss it. There are a lot of questions and topics. But the main theme of the Congress is sales. This is our locomotive, which is dragging everything now.

The Agenda of the Congress:

• 12.00-13.00 - Speeches (John Kopiski, Taras Kozhanov, Maria Koval, Vladimir Borev, Oleg Sirota) and other cheese-makers
• 13.00-13.30 - the establishment of the Association of cheese-makers
• 13.30-14.30 - Discussion of participation in the Moscow trade fairs for 2017. A plan of activities. Goals and objectives
• 14.30-14.40 - Collection of applications with the output volume taking into account the schedule of the annual growth to understand the sales volumes at fairs and other sites
• 14.40-15.00 - Discussion of the interaction with the city administration of Moscow.

15.00-15.30 Break

• 15.30 - 16.00 - Matter of cooperation and the establishment of marketing cooperatives
• 16.00 - 16.30 - Discussion the need of creating a common cooperative warehouse in Moscow region
• 16.30 - Signing of the agreement with the Ministry of agriculture of Moscow region
• 16.30 - 17.45 – Discussion additional questions or comments
• 18.00 - End of work of Congress

Additional questions:

• Discussion of need for changes in sanitary regulations and the creation of the working group on legislation adjustment
• Appeal to the Minister of industry, Manturov D. V. for equipment for dairies
• Discussion of the cooperation agreement with Rosselkhozbank

The agenda and suggestions will be supplemented - we're still gathering feedback.

To participate you need to register. Registration for the forum is here:

http://www.agromosreg.ru/regtestcom/ and come with your passport.

Location map.

Read full article in Russian on DairyNews.ru