In case you weren't aware, in August 2014, Putin banned all beef, pork, fish, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway for one year, retaliating for Western economic sanctions imposed after the Kremlin destabilized Ukraine. The bans were in place before the consequences were thought through, but it certainly meant that the population had to look to its own production.
In 2015/6, Russia banned the cultivation and importation of GMO crops. The only exceptions are cases of GMO production that are used for the purpose of scientific research. In 2016, the then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said,
"IF THE AMERICANS LIKE TO EAT GMO PRODUCTS, LET THEM EAT IT THEN. WE DON’T NEED TO DO THAT; WE HAVE ENOUGH SPACE AND OPPORTUNITIES TO PRODUCE ORGANIC FOOD."
It is certainly true that Russia has the space as it is the largest country on earth after all. And the bans didn't stop at GMOs. At a press conference in 2016, Medvedev said that Russia intended to command 25% of organic food sales in the global market by establishing large scale exports. Food includes all crops - plant and meat. And the organic food industry is expected to achieve €50 billion by 2050.
To build an organic farming industry, by definition you can't have GMO and it seems this all started because the Russians - Putin - have a deep distrust of GMOs. Something many consider to be perfectly reasonable, because nobody has a definitive answer over their long term impact and they simply haven't lived through enough generations yet to see any impact.
According to ISAA, roughly half of the global area of GMO crops in the world is soybeans, with 47 percent of the global area was for herbicide-tolerant GMO crops. The GMO Genetic Literacy Project says that US planted the most GMO crop area at 73 million hectares, followed by Brazil (49 million), Argentina (24 million), Canada (12 million) and India (11 million). These 5 countries made of 91 percent of the global area of GMO crops.
In the 10 years from 2005-2015, the area of organic agricultural land in Russia increased more than 5,000%, from 6,900 to 385,140 hectares, which amounts to 0.2% of the total agricultural land in the country.
The average Russian organic farm is small-to-medium size; between roughly 50-100 hectares in size. Many private farmers are engaged in organic production, but they are overshadowed by the bigger companies.
Images from top: Unsplash | Michael Parulave / Alexei Druzhinin | Sputnik / resiliance.org