Lack of personnel is increasingly hampering business development in the agro-industrial complex

31% of INFOLine survey participants noted the urgency of increasing logistics costs and increasing the share of private label sales in retail chains. 28% of respondents said that the development of their business is hampered by insufficient demand from consumers, 27% complained about the monopolization of the retail market by retail chains. 15% of market participants surveyed spoke about the problem of gray schemes among competitors, 5% each spoke about the factor of importing competing products and legal restrictions.

“The lack of qualified personnel has become a top business problem for many reasons, including the migration of the middle class, which formed a qualified layer of personnel,” comments INFOLine CEO Ivan Fedyakov. “Many foreign companies that left the country took with them not only brands, but also especially valuable employees.”

The shortage of personnel is not a new problem for the agricultural sector along the entire chain “from field to counter”, but recently its relevance has increased significantly, including against the backdrop of last year’s partial mobilization. At the same time, the industry’s insufficient popularity, especially among young people, is also reflected. As a study showed (Agroinvestor has its results) from the personnel company UTEAM and the Grodan company (part of the Rockwool group of companies), only 38% of participants in their survey believe that the agricultural sector is attractive for employment, and 20% are confident that the industry is completely unattractive to young people. 42% of respondents think that young people can be attracted to the agricultural sector under certain conditions.

Among them, study participants named high salaries (20%), the availability of vacancies involving mental work (16%), and an expanded social package (13%). 12% of respondents admit that young people will be attracted to the agricultural sector if they hire employees without work experience, 11% believe that positive changes are possible with the availability of modern technologies and equipment. At the same time, 32% of respondents think that most agricultural companies use outdated equipment, 36% think that nothing has changed there for years and there are no innovations.

Among the disadvantages of working in the agricultural sector, participants in the Grodan and UTEAM study named the lack of career growth (35%), 21% of respondents consider the need to work in rural areas where infrastructure is not developed as a disadvantage. 18% of respondents believe that wages in the industry are low, 17% noted hard physical work. The least common disadvantages of working in the agricultural sector were disrespect for specialized professions (12%) and the same type of tasks (11%). Only 18% of respondents do not see any disadvantages.

In the Krasnodar Territory, in the agricultural sector there are an average of 2.7 resumes per vacancy, writes Kommersant with reference to the press service of the online recruiting platform HeadHunter. Experts say that this ratio of the number of resumes to the number of vacancies indicates a shortage of personnel in the industry. A similar situation is observed throughout Russia in the agricultural sector. In addition to agronomists, technologists, veterinarians and livestock specialists, companies in the agricultural industry need sales managers, drivers, accountants, and engineers. The demand for specialists in digital professions is growing: system administrators, developers, web analysts, data engineers, specialists in brand management, creativity and online advertising. The average proposed salary in the agricultural sector in Kuban is 53 thousand rubles. Salaries for managerial positions reach 200-250 thousand rubles. per month.

The lack of personnel is one of the biggest problems for the entire agro-industrial complex, Pavel Tsarev, general director of AgroGard, recently said in an interview. According to him, personnel shortages are observed not only among specialists with higher education - agronomists, livestock specialists, veterinarians, but also among blue-collar professions: there are not enough tractor drivers, mechanics, and drivers. “In addition, due to the development of digitalization, the introduction of precision farming and smart livestock technologies, specialists in the field of biotechnology, genetics and breeding are becoming in demand. The problem of the shortage of these personnel will become especially acute in the near future due to the changed conditions for the supply of seed and biological material,” he noted.

According to Tsarev, the outflow of personnel from rural areas is primarily due to insufficiently comfortable living conditions: a low level of development of housing and social infrastructure, an insufficiently wide range of cultural and leisure institutions, and consumer service enterprises. “We need to generally improve living conditions in rural areas so that they are attractive to young professionals,” the head of the agricultural holding is confident.  

“We see an outflow of personnel from agriculture to construction and the defense industry, where the level of wages has recently increased significantly,” says UTEAM General Director Anna Krylova. — There is a separate situation with young people: in principle, there are not many of them in the labor market today <…>. To attract young specialists, agricultural enterprises are doing a lot of work to “immerse” schoolchildren in the field, proving and showing that agriculture  is a developed high-tech sector.”

According to Krylova, now the agro-industrial complex is one of the most promising areas for employment. “Today, this sector is the main driver of the economy, and therefore agriculture requires many new employees, with a particularly acute shortage of skilled workers and engineers,” she emphasizes. “Against the backdrop of the events of the last year, the situation has become more complicated, since in food production many ingredients were imported only from Western countries, now they are not there, and such production facilities are being built in Russia, but the question of management and engineering personnel arises.”