Gennady Ivanovich Bessonov, Secretary General of the CCTP, and Dmitry Vladimirovich Potapenko, President of the Afanasy Nikitin Association, also chaired the meeting:
- N.N. Pomoschnikov, head of the ESCAP Subregional Office for North and Central Asia;
- O.Yu. Kobyakov, Director of the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation;
- A.I. Ivanov, Head of the Logistics Committee of Afanasiy Nikitin Association;
- Representatives of major logistics operators - RZD Logistics, FESCO, Transcontainer, Eurosib-SPb, Europack, Spetscontainer and many others.
The main questions, raised for discussion, were concerned with the interaction of agricultural producers and transport companies. Issues of logistics directly relate both to the cost of agricultural products for end users and the issues of food safety.
"Every fifth calorie on our table crosses at least two borders," Oleg Yuryevich Kobyakov, Director of FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) office for relations with the Russian Federation, noted in his speech.
Although humankind has set a goal to fully eradicate hunger by 2030, almost one billion people will be chronically hungry by 2022.
Agricultural production must increase by 70% to provide food for the world population by 2030, when it is projected to grow to 9 billion people.
Consequently, the burden and responsibility on the transport industry for transporting and storing food increases many times over.
Russia has already faced with problems of storing excessive crops this year, and the forecast of only food production requires really enormous volumes of transportation.
In this regard, there is a critical shortage of container equipment, storage and processing capacity, and in general - the built scheme of interaction between the transport industry and the agro-industrial complex.
In this regard, the "Eurasian AgroExpress" project, which allows to balance the mutual turnover of agricultural companies, retailers and major suppliers, becomes especially relevant.
The project involves the withdrawal of commodity products as yet undeveloped markets, and joint work of agricultural producers and logisticians to consolidate consignments of goods in intra-regional interactions.
The output of commodity lots to new markets involves the reduction of barriers due to the simplified control procedures, implementation of innovative digital solutions, electronic trading platforms and ecosystems.
The Project has already launched a simplified customs and phytosanitary corridor coordinated by the control authorities of the countries participating in the Agroexpress route. This allows retail companies to ensure the transparency of delivery, speed up delivery time to 2-4 days and reduce costs to $ 200 - 400 per container in general.
The "Eurasian Agroexpress" project allows to attract new suppliers of food products - small and medium producers of high quality and environmentally friendly products from Central Asia - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and the Persian Gulf countries - Iran, Oman and provide export-import logistics in a short time and with full quality preservation of food products.
