IMPORT SUBSTITUTION IN SEED PRODUCTION AS A FACTOR IN ENSURING FOOD SECURITY OF THE UNION STATE

In modern geopolitical conditions, the countries of the Union State – Russia and the Republic of Belarus - face the task of ensuring food security. An essential condition for this is to achieve independence while providing national agricultural producers with seed and planting material produced in the Union State. The countries of the Union State have a large-scale collection of plant samples, an authoritative school of geneticists and breeders, favorable natural and climatic conditions, which makes it possible to produce zoned varieties. However, since the 1990s, the seed industry of the Union State countries has gradually declined, because foreign more highly productive hybrids began to enter the market, for the successful implementation of which foreign firms used the entire arsenal of the marketing system, including a wide network of agricultural managers who were engaged in product promotion. After 2022, as a result of the adoption of a number of regulatory documents, the import of foreign hybrids decreased significantly, and the national breeding and seed production systems of the Union State countries received a new development. For a successful import substitution process in the seed production of the Union State countries, it is necessary to create a favorable institutional environment for all participants in the process, including production, refinement, storage, sale, transportation of seeds, quality control: farmers, breeders, production workers, representatives of the public and private sectors, financial and regulatory authorities; harmonize legislation and organizational and economic mechanism in the field of breeding and seed production.