Why is an attempt to legalize the purchase of berries and mushrooms from the population dangerous?

“People go to the taiga not with a stick, but with a carbine”

They want to make the half-shadow practice of buying mushrooms, nuts and berries from the population as transparent as possible. The initiative belongs to the Union of Procurers and Processors of Wild Plants, which complains about gaps in legislation that make life difficult for this very specific business. The State Duma received a bill called, in the words of one of its authors, Andrei Mikhailenko, “to streamline all controversial points.” Duma members, for their part, are already preparing appropriate amendments to the Forest Code. Meanwhile, this sphere is extremely difficult, and it is not very clear whether the state should change the spontaneously established rules of the game.

To date, Russia has not established a procedure for documenting the purchase of wild plants by processors from the population. Banks consider such transactions as high-risk, block accounts and blacklist businessmen. As a result, it is difficult for the latter to attract investors and obtain a preferential loan. Accordingly, participants in the wild plants market are proposing amendments to the Forest Code that will change this situation. In general, this is not so much about some legal nuances, but about an attempt to shake a block that is not subject to the state, one of the components of informal employment.

Today, the extraction and trade of forest mushrooms, berries, nuts, medicinal plants in the country is largely going on in the gray. Meanwhile, according to unofficial estimates, every fifth rural resident is engaged in it. The illegal market (trade from stalls, near the roads) is several times larger than the legal one. Prices are lower, since such collectors do not pay VAT: on average, you can get from 100 to 250 rubles per kilogram of wild berries. And the fines are ridiculous – from 200 to 2 thousand rubles.

According to the strategy for the development of the forest complex, the biological reserves of only the most common wild plants in the Russian Federation reach 13 million tons, operational reserves – more than 7 million tons. The gap between these figures and the actual volumes of annual collections is huge: in 2022, a “harvest” of 27 thousand tons is expected. The product potential of domestic forests is used by no more than 7%, says Alexander Kogan, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Ecology.

“The tradition of public procurement of mushrooms and berries from the population has more than a dozen years, – reminds the leading expert of the Center for Political Technologies, economist Nikita Maslennikov. – Back in the Soviet Union, there was a system of specialized cooperatives, seasonal collections of wild plants were carried out. For example, in the Far East they collected fern and sold it to China. Later, in the 1990s and 2000s, the state did not get around to reviving these mechanisms. Today, against the backdrop of a global passion for organics, natural products, and proper nutrition, the export potential of Russian wild plants is highly estimated by experts.”

So, according to the expert, the issue requires a more serious, truly government approach. It cannot be solved by financial injections alone without eliminating a huge number of legal gaps and disorderly moments. Business is ready to promote the gifts of the forest to both domestic and foreign markets, but now it is deprived of the opportunity to receive adequate funding. By the way, Maslennikov notes, many product lines for drinks made from taiga herbs and berries, created by Siberians back in the middle of the last decade, are now successfully operating in Europe. And in the 1990s, almost the entire volume of chanterelles collected in central Russia went to Germany and Poland, where these wild mushrooms are valued for their high antioxidant properties.

“Wild plants are collected by tens of thousands of people in Siberia and in areas from Vologda further north, – says Igor Abakumov, host of the Rural Hour program. For them, this is the most important and often the only source of income. Moreover, it has always been beyond the bounds of taxation. Tens of thousands of collectors are already politics, a serious social force. Moreover, we are talking about small towns and villages with a high level of unemployment. These people know their plots, which they have divided among themselves publicly or tacitly, having entered into some kind of civil agreement. And now an attempt is being made to somehow bring them under the taxable base. In principle, from the point of view of fiscal policy, everything is reasonable: we live in a state of law, and where there is income, there should be a tax. However, the issue requires a careful and selective approach, since each of the territories has its own rules related to the local specifics of collecting wild plants: in the Tver region they are one, and to the west, towards Vologda and Arkhangelsk, they are completely different. Somewhere there are more cranberries, and somewhere there are lingonberries and cloudberries.

That is, the state must create conditions, organize sales, cooperation, put money into production facilities, conditionally, in the line for processing hazelnuts. Yes, it is necessary to instill in people a culture of taxation, but do it wisely. And now everyone, including the state, wants money – a lot at once. According to Abakumov, one should not forget about the risk of increased social tension: many gatherers go to the taiga not with a stick, but with a carbine, defending the way of life that they have developed over the past 30 years. So the story is explosive: you need to be more careful with people, especially at a distance from the capital, where they are left to their own devices.