Scientific dispute between a sickle and a hammer – Newspaper Kommersant No. 47 (7492) of 03/21/2023

The Ministry of Agriculture continues to expand grant support for the agro-industrial complex, offering subsidies for the creation of agro-biotechnoparks, infrastructure projects that, according to the ministry, should strengthen the scientific and technological support of the sector. Taking into account the growing shortage of qualified personnel in the labor market and the work of similar industrial technoparks, the deployment of this initiative looks like a continuation of the competition for labor in the agricultural sector and industry that has intensified due to the military conflict in Ukraine.

The Ministry of Agriculture plans to allocate grants for the creation and development of agrobiotechnoparks – the corresponding draft government decree is published on regulation.gov.ru. It is assumed that the network of such parks will become a “platform” for effective interaction between scientific organizations and agro-industrial complex enterprises: the results of scientific and technical developments can be immediately introduced into the process of agricultural production. It should be noted that the very definition of an agrobiotechnopark, which is given in the document, was enshrined in government decree No. 1433 dated August 28, 2021 – in some regions, such infrastructure projects began to be deployed in 2022, but so far there has been no consistency in this process.

In order to stimulate more active work on the creation and development of agrobiotechnoparks, the authorities are going to issue grants that can be spent on equipping the park with the necessary equipment, paying for utilities or transport services, or, for example, salaries for staff members. The commission created by the Ministry of Agriculture will distribute grants in the form of subsidies on a competitive basis in accordance with the applicants’ ability to achieve the indicators set by the ministry. Among them, for example, the formation of a network consisting of at least three agro-biotechnoparks, and the use in them of “at least 15 introduced domestic biotechnologies that are not inferior in terms of characteristics to foreign counterparts.”

The consistent alignment of the system of scientific and technological support of the agro-industrial complex by the Ministry of Agriculture takes place in the context of a shortage of labor in the labor market and actual competition for it with the industrial sector – it existed before the military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, and has noticeably increased since its beginning. The creation of agrobiotechnoparks by analogy with technoparks in industry, apparently, is also partly due to “competition” for qualified personnel, as well as measures directly related to their training. Such initiatives appear regularly – for example, in early March, a draft resolution was published on regulation.gov.ru, which provides for the allocation of grants to educational organizations that train workers in the professions and specialties most in demand for the agro-industrial complex. As Kommersant was told in the Ministry of Agriculture, the support measure will be “of a continuing nature”: while the document refers to the training of 8 thousand people who should form a personnel reserve for the industry, however, the practice can expand “as needed and a request is received from employers” .

It is interesting that in the explanatory note to the draft resolution on new measures of grant support, among other things, the concept of “food security of the Russian Federation” is cited as a rationale for their need – this argument is probably the most significant for the AIC now in contrast to the statements of the industrial sector about “technological sovereignty”.

Christina Borovikova