Evaluation of the availability of forage harvesting equipment and prospects for its market development in the Russian Federation

Abstract

Animal husbandry has been one of the priority areas for the development of agriculture in the Russian Federation over the past decade. One of the factors which gave impetus to its development is the adoption of policies of import substitution, which led not only to increased demand for livestock products due to the limitation of imports from countries that joined sanctions against Russia, but also the development of production sectors that ensure the functioning of this direction of agriculture, in particular agricultural engineering enterprises, producing forage machinery and equipment for maintenance of beef and dairy herds. The analysis of dynamics of changes of quantitative composition of the forage machines fleet shows that over the past three decades there has been a steady tendency to its permanent reduction, due primarily to a decrease in the number of livestock and, as a consequence, the reduction of lands under fodder crops and the general trend of increasing the saturation of machines in agriculture that can significantly increase their productivity. Along with obvious advantages, such as, for example, saving fuel and lubricants and wages due to a reduction in the number of runs on the field, such trends carry a number of risks associated with possible downtime to eliminate the consequences of failures and, as a result, violation of agrotechnical harvesting deadlines. Foreign companies that have moved their assembly plants to the territory of the Russian Federation and have fulfilled the requirements for localization of production often leave the production of spare parts outside its borders, which can not be considered as a positive factor from the point of view of food security. State support, which until recently was mainly directed at equipment manufacturers, did not fully stimulate the implementation of research and development work that could increase the competitiveness of national products over foreign ones, all other things being equal. These factors together dictate the need to conduct research on the prospects for the development of its market.