Addressing the Government Commission on Agriculture, Mr Zubkov pointed out that "the main task of the agro-industrial sector today is to secure the availability of domestically produced staple food items." That applies above all to the production of milk and meat.

Mr Zubkov noted that in 2009 the budget will allocate 5 billion roubles for the federal targeted programme of the development of dairy livestock breeding and 4 billion roubles for meat livestock breeding. He said that by 2012 Russia should produce 37 million tons of milk and 11.4 million tons of meat. That would increase per capita annual meat consumption from 55 to 73 kg and milk consumption from 235 to 261 litres.

In addition, in his opinion, special attention should be paid to building large meat and dairy complexes. "If we want to increase the production of whole milk in Russia building such complexes must become the priority in Russian agriculture," Mr Zubkov said.