During the forum "Agribusiness of Siberia: Present and Future", which was held in Barnaul, Roman Kostyuk, Director General of the National Union of Beef Producers (NSPG), reported a catastrophic shortage of beef in the Russian market.

Analysis of the domestic market of the Russian Federation showed that it is experiencing an acute shortage of cattle meat.

In order to fully saturate the market with this product, covering the needs of citizens, the country lacks 2 million cows, the expert said.

All hope of the industry now is only on Altai livestock breeders. It is they who intensively develop beef cattle breeding in Russia. Livestock farmers in the Altai Territory were among the first to master the use of natural resources for the development of beef cattle breeding, and also organized export deliveries of raised breeding cows, said Roman Kostyuk.

For information, according to official figures, in the first half of this year in the Russian Federation 7 million 984 thousand heads of cattle were kept.

This is almost half as much as it was in 1917. Experts predict that by 2025 their number will be reduced to 7.4-7.5 million heads.

During the first general agricultural census of 1916-1917. the number of cows in Russia reached 17.3 million heads.