Agriculture

The agrarian sector plays a very important role in the economy of the Republic of Tatarstan. The agriculture of our Republic covers the local needs in the basic food stuffs.

Region cropped represents 65.4% of the total land area of the Republic. The arability of agricultural areas makes up 81.9%.

The leading agricultural sector is cattle breeding. Meat products include beef, pork, poultry, mutton, etc. In 1995, the Republic produced 344.2 thousand tons of meat for slaughtering, gross yield of milk made up 1614.1 thousand tons, egg production reached the figure of 1079.8 mln pcs. In addition to cattle breeding, the breeding of fur animals, rabbits, pure­breed horses is well developed in the Republic, as well as beekeeping and fishery. According to data obtained in 1995, the following crops prevail in plantgrowing: wheat (1110.6 thousand tons per year), rye (501.5 thousand tons per year), barley (653.4 thousand tons per year), oats (309.7 thousand tons per year), buckwheat (18,8 thousand tons per year). The area sown to vegetables represented by sugar beet (859.4 thousand tons), potato (1565.5 thousand tons), vegetables (282.6 thousand tons). The major part of grain (99.5%) and sugar beet (99.97%) was produced by agricultural establishments; individual farms produced 80% of potato and 59% of vegetables. In general, the share of individual farms in the value of gross produce made up some 35% in 1995.

For the past few years large­scale investments were put into agriculture and processing. However, reforming the agroindustrial complex is not at all easy. To speed up the reform in agricultural sector it is planned to fix land and property shares with the workers and to eliminate the practice of separating the interests of agricultural producers, processors and traders.