November 21 2002, 18:04 APK-Inform

Grain union conference was held in Moscow

The 7th Conference of Russian Grain Union (RGU) was held in Moscow November 20. Among the participants there were representatives of Russian Parliament's agriculture related committees, Russian government, industry associations, farming businesses, grain market analysts, scientists from Russia and abroad.

President of RGU Arkady Zlochevsky, opening the Conference, spoke about the need of strengthening government support of grain production, processing and exports.

An important issue discussed by Conference participants was ongoing grain interventions in Russia. Different opinions were being voiced, but as a whole the interventions were assessed as a success compared to last year's ones; the importance of this mechanism for the country's grain market and the need to keep it up for the future was appreciated.

Another important topic discussed was a need to step up the country's grain export capacities and to raise domestic consumption of grain.

Also, various concerns related with GM varieties of grains, issues of grain products standardisation and grain market information infrastructure were among the topics discussed by participants of the forum.

Ukrainian Grain Association was represented by its Vice-President S. Stoyanov.