Russian milk producers continue to increase efficiency: Russia has risen to 18th place in the world in terms of cow productivity, and the threshold for entering the TOP 30 most efficient farms has exceeded 11,300 kg/cow/year. The rating was presented by National Dairy Producers Union Soyuzmoloko, Streda Consulting and Milknews.
“Russia continues to introduce large industrial-scale dairy farms, where systematic work is being carried out on feed, genetics, comfort of keeping and reproduction of the herd, which allows us to have productivity indicators at the level of world leaders," said Artem Belov, CEO of Soyuzmoloko. ”The efficiency analysis shows that it is precisely such large farms with a high yield per cow that have the greatest profitability."
According to him, the growth rate of livestock productivity in Russia over the past 10 years has been 3-4% per year. Only Argentina and Saudi Arabia demonstrate comparable growth rates among the world leaders in milk production. As a result, if Russia has long been consistently among the top 10 largest producers of milk in the world, then in the world ranking of cow productivity by the end of 2023, with an average yield of 7,911 kg/cow/year, Russia rose to 18th place, ahead of Argentina, Poland and Slovakia.
The unconditional leader of the rating remains the Agroholding “Steppe” with assets in several regions of the Southern Federal District with an indicator of 15,258 kg/cow/year.
“In terms of regions, for the first time, the Krasnodar Territory has overtaken the Leningrad Region in productivity, which has been the undisputed leader for many years," said Alexey Gruzdev, CEO of Streda Consulting. “This happened primarily due to the capacity of recently built large industrial-scale farms, including the Agroholding Steppe, Progress–Agro Group and KMTK."
According to him, the TOP 10 regions in terms of productivity have an average of more than 9 thousand kg per cow per year, which is comparable to the level of Canada, which ranks fifth in the world. “This shows that in our entire large geography, advanced regions, by increasing the share of industrial farms, can operate at a global level of production efficiency, regardless of the natural and climatic zone,” he stressed.
At the same time, experts draw attention to the risks of slowing down the pace of further growth in milk production in 2024: an increase in cost in 2023, against the background of falling milk prices, led to a decrease in profitability and, as a result, accelerated culling of cows and a reduction in livestock. At the same time, the cost of new investment projects, the implementation of which could improve the situation and restore the number of cows, has increased significantly in recent years, and the availability of equipment and agricultural machinery has become more complicated. In addition, in 2024 due to the increase in the key rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the cost of borrowed funds has significantly increased both for the construction of new farms and to support the functioning of existing ones.
