‘Russian Minister for Agriculture Alexei Gordeev included Chelyabinsk Region in the country’s agricultural areas register, so the South Urals can now take pride in being both an agrarian and an industrial node of this part of Russia,’ Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin said in the course of a ceremony dedicated to honoring the local farmers and processing industry workers.

The spokesperson for the Governor reports the region’s agricultural industry has made a real breakthrough over the last decade. Chelyabinsk Region was nearly on the bottom of the country’s Top 30 regions in the 1990s but now normally Russia’s No.9, while its agricultural output rose from 14 million RUR to 60 billion RUR worth of sales.

‘This means that farmers contribute to as much as 10% of the region’s GDP, which comes from ten years of hard work,’ Petr Sumin said.

The Governor congratulated all the farmers on the season’s successful harvesting and said that Chelyabinsk Region’s ambition was to become self-sustained in terms of meat, milk, vegetable and potato supplies by 2011 and to raise the crop output by 1.5 times. It was the country and its further revival that were expected to help the region and the country go through the trouble period smoothly, become less dependent on imported foods, and provide the people with good quality affordable food products, he said.

The participants of the ceremony also received congratulations and greetings from Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Petr Latyshev, who said that despite the challenging climate, the regional farmers managed to get great harvest.

‘Chelyabinsk Region currently produces a third of Ural Federal District’s crops and vegetables, whereas the local food manufacturers are on the country’s Top 10 list and keep winning in the All-Russian Golden Fall competition. We are proud of you, we thank you for your efforts, and we hope for good harvest in the year 2009 as well,’ he said.