The price of bread in Russia

The 'grain war' is also having heavy repercussions within the country. Moscow needs to obtain hard currency and therefore favours exports, causing the prices of quality flour for the domestic market to skyrocket. The logistical effects of international sanctions are also making it difficult to maintain production levels.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Among the many consequences of the "wheat war", one of the most global dimensions of Russia's conflict in Ukraine, there is also the increase in the price of bread in Russia, which in the autumn could reach unprecedented levels.

The problem, experts say, is the Russian need to obtain currency to cope with the collapse of the ruble, and wheat is the most suitable material to get out of the dead end: everyone needs it and no one can sanction it.

Many remember a phrase from Emperor Alexander III at the end of the 19th century (one of Vladimir Putin's role models), who, faced with a somewhat similar situation, said "We will eat less of it, but we will export it!".

Russia is the world's largest exporter of cereals, which together with gas and oil have formed the basis for the country's economic development. 150 years after the proclamation of the only tsar who never made war, and laid the foundations for the industrialization of Russia, the government in Moscow turns again to the grain trade as a last resort, so as not to end it altogether on the fringes of world markets.

Even in Soviet times, moreover, the grain policy was similar to the current one, generously bringing production everywhere in the world, even when this caused internal insufficiency. In the last years of the USSR this had even forced the purchase of Canadian wheat, but today's Putinian managers do not make long-term plans, frantically trying to cope with an increasingly dead-end situation.

Russia's exit from the wheat agreement, which not even Erdogan's latest visit to Putin managed to unblock, is causing a sharp increase in the prices of flour and cereals both globally and in Russia's internal market.

In the last month, top quality flour has risen exponentially in price, something not seen in decades. According to the National Union of Wheat Producers (NSK), this year has exceeded 2022 values by 15-18%, and there is no prospect of a slowdown.

At this juncture, agricultural companies are "holding back" their production loads, awaiting further increases, with the result that supplies to the markets from the latest harvests are increasingly unsatisfactory, both in terms of quality and overall size.

As the director of the NSK, Rustam Ajdiev, states, "if the situation does not change radically, the bread that will be sold will be produced with generic flour, it will no longer be real bread".

Complaints about the increasingly poor quality of bread are already multiplying among the Russian population, and also in the media and information, starting from Siberian areas such as Omsk, Tyumen and Krasnoyarsk, where people throw bread in the garbage just purchased, after tasting it.

There are also many other causes of the increase in prices, in the vortex of the Russian economy increasingly devastated by international sanctions, and agriculture itself is struggling to maintain production levels without imported materials. Many problems are related to logistics and fuel costs for transporting goods.

The devaluation of the ruble also increases the problems of guaranteeing imported goods which can still arrive, with costs skyrocketing here too. However, bakers prefer malt and additives from other countries, because the Russian ones are not of sufficient quality, and even the packaging has become much more expensive.

The war has also greatly reduced the qualified workforce, and the few available operators ask for increasingly higher salaries. In short, bread has become the "time machine" that takes Russia further and further back to the times of the USSR, with the nostalgic phrase "how good bread was then!".

Except that the memory of this "then" does not really correspond to periods of well-being, but to dreams of a Russia that no longer exists, and perhaps never existed.

• Russia
• Moscow
• war
• Ukraine
• wheat
• bread
• sanctions