EEU countries to fully provide themselves with vegetables by 2018

Crop acreage and vegetable production in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in 2018 will increase by 11 percent that will fully meet the demand for the product among the Union's population. The Eurasian Economic Commission reported.

It is noted that over the past five years, vegetable production in the EEU countries increased by 13 percent and reached 24 million tons in 2016. Russia accounts for nearly 70 percent of the vegetable production and growth will continue in the coming years.

It is planned to intensify the cultivation of vegetables in protected ground, since more than 70 percent of imports come to our countries in off-season time. We are actively working on these issues within the framework of the Eurasian technological platforms.

Director of the Department of Agro-Industrial Policy of the Eurasian Economic Commission Stanislav Buben

«In particular, an innovative pilot project has been formed to build a high-tech greenhouse complex in Russia with a full cycle of storage and processing of vegetable products," Stanislav Buben said.

Since the introduction of temporary restrictions on the import of certain agricultural products to Russia, the volume of vegetable imports to the union states from the third countries had almost halved compared to 2014.