Addressing farm machinery operator Alexander Shavklis, who at the beginning of the meeting had invited the president and the prime minister to visit the Rodina farm, Vladimir Putin said: "Dmitry Medvedev and I have taken advantage of your invitation, and we have come with the purpose of congratulating you and, as they used to say in the old days, all workers of agriculture in your person, on your fantastic results. You have reaped a great harvest this year. We hope that it will benefit you and this country as a whole, and that your success will be reflected in the wages, diets and prices in major cities. We hope that you will sell your harvest at a decent price and that city residents will also pay a fair price."

In particular, they spoke about state support for agriculture, without which, as one of the farmers said, “we would have never been able to achieve such impressive results. We saved 7 million roubles at our farm alone,” he said. In response, Putin said that “the agricultural industry saved about 2.5 billion roubles in 2009; last year's savings amounted to 5.5 billion roubles, whereas this year, as much as 17 billion roubles remained in agriculture.”

Speaking about the federal targeted programme for rural development until 2012, Prime Minister Putin said that regional authorities should actively take part in the implementation of this programme. “We did everything on a parity basis,” said the prime minister. “We should continue on the same basis with regard to mortgages, settling-in allowances, and as regards the Teachers’ House programme. This should all be done together.”

Speaking about this year’s grain prices, the prime minister said, “As you know, we used to intervene to control domestic pricing in prior years; in other words, we bought the grain ourselves. This year, we decided to allow exports in order to move surplus grain off the domestic market. Our exports will amount to approximately 24-25 million metric tonnes. Following this, we will introduce certain restrictions so that the country is not left without bread, and we will have some carryover reserves for next year.”

“What this means,” said the prime minister, “is that our exporters should hear this and refrain from signing an excessive number of export contracts, so that they don’t find themselves having to tell us later that they need more grain to comply with the terms of their export contracts. We can export about 24-25 million metric tonnes of grain, after which point we will impose high export duties in order to keep the grain in Russia. By so doing we are going to regulate prices on the domestic market. This is my first point. Second, as you may be aware, we decided to cut transportation costs for grain coming from Siberia, the Far East and some other regions. This is another means to support grain growers. Third, so far we have no plans to carry out grain interventions, but we will issue loans for produce with an option to buy back. I will explain what this means for those who may not know how this works. We will issue secured loans. If a farmer can sell his grain on his own and wants his grain back, we will give him his grain back and he will return our money. Let’s try this out and see if it works for us.”

The prime minister believes that this kind of approach can be explained by the fact that “grain intervention in itself costs quite a lot, and storing grain is not easy. We don’t have the sufficient capacity for proper storage. The grain rots. Storing grain costs almost as much as the grain itself.”

One of the participants in the meeting brought up the issue of electricity prices, as this is a very important component of the investment calculations that farmers make.

Having heard explanations on this subject from Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who promised to eliminate the cost of connecting to the grid in the next 12 months, the prime minister said: “The investment component of the power grids does not include connection costs, and so on. This should not be done.” He went on to say, “This should not be part of the grid operators’ investment programmes. They are paid their tariffs and should be able to expand their operations using this money. And the government should help them as well.”

Vladimir Putin requested that Gazprom cancel its principle of “take or pay” when dealing with Russian consumers. In response to a complaint by a farmer who said that the company employs mark-up factors for electricity provided above the agreed amount, the prime minister said to Igor Sechin: “We are applying the ‘take or pay’ principle in our export arrangements. Why would we do that here?!”

The participants also brought up isolated instances of improper conduct of young people coming to the Stavropol Territory from neighbouring republics. The prime minister responded by saying that “all such instances should receive strict responses wherever they take place and for whomever causes trouble, regardless of their ethnicity or faith.” He went on to say that “if a person breaks the law, he or she must be held responsible for the violation.” In this case, once again (as during a recent conference call with the Stavropol Territory), the prime minister focused on the need to improve the work of law enforcement agencies operating in the Stavropol Territory.