Food in Russia

It's hard to find something similar to the "Food. Inc" movie, which would tell about same problems in Russia. At the same time I believe that globalization influences to the processes of making food in Russia, even by importing food from other countries. And Russia imports a lot.

As a resurch company ID-Marketing mentions in its annual food industry survey, the import of different kind of foods in Russia is permanently growing. For example, import of meat grown in 2008 comparing to 2007 by 14.8%, of fish - by 1.2%. Import of vegetable oil grew also, and the number of it increased by 17.3% comparing to 2008. As for the coffee generally the import growed by 16% in recent years. There is completely different situation with the import of gramineae. For example, the import decreased by 61% in 2007, and by 41% in 2008.
The last crisis has changed a lot in food industry. During the first quarter of 2009 the import decreased by 33.2% in meat market, by 3.7% in chicken market, by 31% in vegetable oil.

Though the import is decreasing, I don't think it's really influence on the technology. It's the same process of concentration or centralization in all industries. It's a well known processe which is described by growing huge companies and displacement of small ones. So, it's the same in Russia. For example, "NMZHK" is one of the biggest companies in oil and fat production.

Finally, I would say that globalization makes the world smaller and multinational corporations come to many countries, unifying the processes of building industries, habbits of people and even culture. As a result it's really hard for small companies to compete with them in advertisment, marketing and producing the cheap food. That's why one way or another producing something in Russia can remind the same process in the US.