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52. Sanctions Have Failed. 'Buy Russian' Is Working

By Gilbert Doctorow

It is now more than a year that Russia imposed its food embargo on the EU and other states which had applied sanctions to it over its absorption of Crimea and intervention in southeastern Ukraine. The results of the change-over in overseas suppliers and rising import substitution through the efforts of domestic producers have now become fairly clear.

In this brief report based on visits to retail outlets ranging from convenience stores and market stalls to hypermarkets and from the St Petersburg city center to hamlets 80 km away in the hinterland, I will try to make some sense of what has occurred, how Russians’ shopping basket has changed so far and where the trend lines are leading. Put another way, I will start with a number of small and specific observations and end with some generalizations and forecasts of what broad processes are underway and how they can affect the global food trade.

The provenance of food in Russia’s retail chain is fairly easy to determine. Many sellers across the retail distribution universe identify the foreign country or domestic region responsible for any given product. And at the popular level of municipal markets, the vendors go a step further, acting as hawkers for certain producing areas that are in the public eye. Today this means in particular Crimean products like wines, strawberries, tomatoes and the like. Then there are the especially profitable early fruits and vegetables (primeurs) coming from the Russian South, meaning from Rostov-on-Don down into the enormously fertile Krasnodar region. A very unsentimental lot, the market stall vendors are pitching to the self-reliant, patriotic mood that is very much in the air across Russian society today.

In this regard, it was particularly instructive to spend some time at one of the most prestigious municipal markets in downtown St Petersburg, the Maltsevsky Rynok. Fish mongers there were both well informed and talkative on my several visits. Their assortment has changed dramatically since the introduction of the embargo. Greek farmed dorade and sea bass are gone. Russian sourced fish has stepped up its presence. Europe’s largest fresh water lake, Ladoga, located just 40 km from the Northern Capital, is now a big factor in the wild fish varieties on offer, meaning the whitefish (sig) that otherwise is a favored lake fish in neighboring Finland and large lake trout that approach the size of a salmon. Farmed trout from the republic of Karelia that abuts the Leningrad oblast on Ladoga’s northern and eastern coasts are also featured.

Complete story at - http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/sanctions-have-failed-buy-russian-working/ri9050