Authorities Reveal Russian Food Embargo Impact on German Agriculture Income

BERLIN (Sputnik) - Russia’s four-year food embargo on Germany has only had a limited effect on its agriculture industry, German authorities told Sputnik.

Russia banned European food imports – meat, sausage, fish and seafood, fruit, vegetables, and dairy – in August 2014 in response to sanctions imposed on it for having taken back Crimea.

Germany was Russia’s biggest EU supplier of food. But the German Agriculture Ministry has assessed the years-long export curbs as having "very limited impact" on food production, income and market prices.

"Model estimates showed German agriculture income drop in summer 2015 by a maximum of 0.3 percent due to the embargo, while earnings of the German food industry were slashed by 0.4 percent. This effect should have since decreased," the ministry said.

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Germany succeeded in shoring up its agriculture industry by finding other export markets, authorities said without elaborating. They pointed to various sanitary regulations introduced by Russia shortly before the tit-for-tat restrictions, which saw trade between the two countries shrink.