News
16 August 2018
Damate Group intends to build a new plant in Penza region
News -Damate Group, a Russian agroholding operating over 10,000 ha and specializing in milk and turkey production, has signed an agreement with the government of the Penza region and Rosselkhozbank on the establishment of a turkey processing plant in the region. The estimated amount of investments is expected to reach RUB 5.7 billion. The project aims to...
15 August 2018
Epicentr Agro to increase its storage capacity
News -Epicentr Agro, an agricultural subsidiary of the Ukraine-based building supplies chain Epicentr K, is going to modernize its elevator in the town of Nemyriv, Vinnytsia region. According to the head of trade at Epicentr Agro Svitlana Nikityuk, the company plans to build new storage facilities to increase its one-time storage capacity from 52,000...
15 August 2018
Ekoniva is No. 1 milk producer in Russia in 2017
News -According to the ranking, prepared by the market analytics agency Milknews and consulting agency Streda, Ekoniva became Russia’s largest milk producer in 2017, with the result of 300,000 tonnes of raw milk. Ekoniva is a Russian ‘daughter’ of the Germany-based company Ekosem-Agrar. As of July 1st 2018, the company owns 110,500 cows, including 51,800...
11 August 2018
Large US dairy farms proved more productive than smaller ones
News -The balance of milk production in the US dairy industry has been shifting from small farms to large farms during the last decade. According to federal data, small dairy farms (with fewer than 500 cattle) produced two-thirds of the nation’s milk in 2001. However, by 2009 their share fell to 40 %. Large farms have proved themselves to be more...
10 August 2018
Large dairy farms increasingly enter organic business in the US
News -The trend in the US dairy industry has been toward fewer but larger farms since the 1980s. At that time, organic milk was available only at farmers markets, specialty grocers or small-scale dairy farms selling to a local cooperative. Nowadays, organic dairy products are widely distributed by mass retailers, such as Costco, Target, and Walmart. And...
10 August 2018
Cherkizovo launches new pig farms
News -Cherkizovo Group put a new feed lot in the Lipetsk region of Russia into operation. The facility is designed to manage 40,000 pigs at once. This will enable the production of about 5.1 thousand tonnes of pork per year. The total investment amounted to RUB 500 million ($ 7.5 million). Thus far the Lipetsk pork cluster of Cherkizovo consists of seven...
09 August 2018
Sexton: there is no finite limit to where the economies of size would cease to matter
News -Richard J. Sexton, Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California at Davis, observes the trend toward big farm sizes (of e.g. 5,000 to 10,000 cows in the dairy sector) in today’s US agriculture. This development is driven by fierce competition on the food markets and the need for producers to exploit all available sources of efficiency. Small operations just cannot compete anywhere except for little niche markets. Sexton made this statement during the IAMO Forum 2018 in Halle, Germany. The extended interview with Richard J. Sexton is coming soon on our website.
09 August 2018
EkoNiva undergoes tremendous expansion
News -Agroholding EkoNiva, the largest milk producer in Russia, is investing in new farms in order to increase its cattle herd by 40,000 cows till the end of 2018. The total number of cattle on the farms, run by the holding, will thus grow from 110,000 to 150,000, including 70,000 milk cows. "We are currently building seven farms in the Voronezh region, two in the Ryazan region, one in the Novosibirsk region, three in the Kaluga region and one in the Orenburg region. This year we will open eight of them," states Stefan Dürr, the managing director of EkoNiva. Also, the company is in talks on the purchase of a new milk farm in the Kursk region for RUB 2.5 billion ($ 37.8 million). EkoNiva also plans to launch a cheese factory with a cottage cheese production line in the Novosibirsk region in 2020. The volume of investments in the cheese factory project is estimated at RUB 18 billion ($ 272.3 million).
09 August 2018
Damate invests $ 93.2 million in dairy farming
News -The Russia-based agricultural group of companies Damate, headed by Naum Babayev, intends to expand its dairy complex "Tyumen Dairy Farms" in the Tyumen region. As a result of the investment, estimated at RUB 1 billion ($ 15.5 million), the number of cows will be increased from 4,600 to 6,000. The construction will be financed, in part, by the...
08 August 2018
African swine fever detected at RBPI
News -More than 111,000 pigs will be destroyed at the farm "Pravdinskoye svinoproizvodstvo" (part of the Russia Baltic Pork Invest Group, RBPI) due to the outbreak of the African swine fever (ASF). The disease was detected on July 10th. At that date the plant contained 111,200 pigs of different age and gender groups. The company is quarantined. The whole herd is subject to destruction. Rosselkhoznadzor, a Russian food safety body, suspects that the management of the infected farm kept the outbreak of the ASF quiet for a while.