Venezuela intends to buy Russian peas, studying supply control system - Russian watchdog

MOSCOW. Sept 12 (Interfax) - Venezuela intends to import Russian peas. A delegation from the Venezuelan Institute of Comprehensive Plant Protection, which visited Russia, studied the supervision system for exporting legume crops.

"The purpose of the delegation's visit was to open the Venezuelan market for the supply of Russian peas," Russia's Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision (Rosselkhoznadzor) said.

The Venezuelan specialists visited the laboratories of the Rostov and Moscow branches of the state-run Center for Assessment of Quality and Safety of Grain, as well as the state-owned All-Russian Plant Quarantine Center. At the Rostov-on-Don port, in the terminal, where grain is shipped for export, a tanker was shown to be loaded with wheat bound for Venezuela. "The foreign guests were assured of the multi-stage grain quality control, and they were shown all the stages of loading, starting from acceptance of agricultural products to loading and filling the holds," the statement said.

The parties discussed further steps to complete the procedure of phytosanitary risk analysis and the admission of peas to the Venezuelan market. The parties agreed to discuss the issues remaining after the visit to Russia.

The demand for peas from Russia has recently increased substantially on the global market, Russian grain market experts said.

As reported by the Grain Quality Assessment Center, an agency of Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia exported 1.4 million tonnes of peas in the 2021/2022 agricultural year (from July 2021 to June 2022), which is 62% more than in the previous agricultural year. This is a record figure. Export in the 2020/2021 agricultural year stood at 863,000 tonnes, while 588,000 tonnes was exported the year before. Peas went up from 7th to 5th place in the top 10 exported crops. The proportion of overall exports also hit a record high of 2.8% against 1.5% in the 2020/2021 agricultural year.

Russia harvested 3.168 million tonnes of peas in 2021 compared to 2.74 million tonnes in 2020, the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said.