In Russia, counter-sanctions provoked “gastronomic patriotism”

The expectations of a number of experts and consumers during the period of the beginning of anti-Russian sanctions that it would be impossible to replace imported products with domestic analogues without losing supply and reducing the demand for goods were not justified.

Participants at a press conference in Moscow spoke about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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Thus, during the discussion, experts presented data from a new study by VTsIOM jointly with the SVOYE Agricultural and Food Foundation on the specifics of Russian residents’ perception of domestic and imported food products.

“We first asked the Russians and asked them to answer the question: if the price were equal, would you buy a domestic or imported product? Here we see that we have two groups,” said Kirill Rodin, director for work with government bodies at VTsIOM. “The first group, which we included, say, Top 3 - Top 4 types of products - vegetables, fish, meat, milk, cheeses - food products, for which our people give complete preference to domestic producers.”

“The next question: do you think that domestic food products, compared to imported ones, are often of higher quality, the same quality, or lower quality? Here 46% tell us that domestic products are of higher quality, another 32% believe that the history here is parity, and 11% tell us that domestic products are losing.

We put the questions on the axes - what do you think, domestic food products in comparison with imported ones are most often of higher quality, products of the same quality? And compared them with the attitude towards price. And here we get that our main part says that domestic products are better and cheaper:

– 16% say that it is better and cheaper, they see the advantage of domestic products over imported ones in terms of price-quality ratio;

–15% say that they are cheaper with comparable quality;

–17% say it’s better at the same price.

Strictly speaking, 48% are those whom we today classify as the group who see the advantages of domestic products over imported ones. Today we have about 10% of their opponents,” Rodin announced the research results.

Chairman of the Presidium of the Association of Retail Trade Companies Igor Karavaev spoke about what influenced the growth of popularity of domestic products.

“Counter-sanctions, in my opinion, gave a powerful impetus to the development of production, primarily agricultural production, and strengthened the trend for gastronomic patriotism among consumers. What is this, and how did it manifest itself in practice? The share of farms that specialize in niche products, including those that fell under the economic embargo, has been steadily increasing since 2014.

According to the latest data, over the past 6 years the increase has been more than 4 percentage points or almost 1,5 times from 10,2% to 14,3%. According to Rosstat, the production of cheese in Russia over the last 3 years has increased by 22%, cattle meat by 28%, and milk-containing products by 2%...

Now the share of goods in the assortment of the largest food retail chains in various categories ranges from 90-95%. The share of local goods depends on the region, but in general it fluctuates around 30%,” the expert said.

“The expectations of experts and consumers during the period of the beginning of the food embargo that it would be impossible to replace imported products with domestic analogues without losing the volume of supply and without reducing the demand for these types of goods did not come true. The production of local products and consumer interest in them demonstrate clear and steady growth,” Karavaev summed up.