"One pig per person"

The Ryazan region is being built up with pig farms. Residents fear it will poison their lives

Overlooking the lagoon

In the village of Lipyagi in the southwest of the Ryazan region there is no central water supply. Local residents - and according to official estimates there are about 400 people - take water from springs and wells. A rural fish farm breeds carp in the local waters, and summer residents from other regions come to Lipyagi to relax in nature.

The proximity to a large pig farm, which could pollute the air and water bodies, was not part of the plans of villagers and summer residents. The Agropromkomplektatsiya-Ryazan company wants to build an enterprise for 80 thousand head in the nearby Skopinsky district.

Residents believed that the pig farm sites would appear one and a half to three kilometers from seven villages where about a thousand people live. Natalya’s private house, where her ancestors lived, will also be located in the vicinity of the enterprise. According to Natalia, about 90% of local residents do not want to have a pig farm nearby.

“What they are going to build here—absolutely gigantic enterprises—could completely poison our lives. Because we come there, enjoy nature, relax, and such proximity will simply kill our native places.

Our air, our springs, where we get water... The fish farm employees say that the fish are ruined,” Natalya told Novaya. We changed her name for security reasons: those who oppose pig farms have already been put under pressure by the authorities.

The main source of concern for villagers is manure, up to a thousand tons from a pig farm per day. The company will dispose of animal waste products in lagoons - open pits where manure is placed for neutralization for a year before it is useful as fertilizer. While the manure settles, the lagoons pollute the air with ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and methane. Manure storage facilities may overflow or begin to leak, causing waste to be released into the environment.

If it's winter, residents of the surrounding villages are lucky - frozen manure does not create any unpleasant odors. But as soon as the lagoons begin to thaw in the spring, a stench covers the surrounding area.

There are already such examples in the Skopinsky district: a pig farm of the SPF Ryazan company opened its doors in 2021, a few kilometers from the village of Voslebovo. Since then, residents have been complaining en masse about the odors. In 2022, local authorities promised to keep the situation under control, and the company promised to correct the situation with a special compound that will reduce the smell of manure. But in 2026 things are still there.

“When the wind is in our direction, it doesn’t smell, it stinks. It seems like shit was spilled near the houses,” local residents wrote in April in chats reviewed by Novaya. The “unbearable stench” reaches the neighboring town of Skopin.

“Pipes are laid across the arable land, this manure is driven into them and spread across the fields. There are accidents with the outpouring of this manure, manure puddles, and it all stinks wildly - except that the lagoons themselves stink... In Voslebov, the pigsty is about half the size of our [future] one, but God forbid, reviews say that there is a chemical fog there. People prone to allergies develop a cough,” says Natalya.

“They [agricultural industrialists] are getting into one of the most fertile places in Russia - the Ryazan black soil. They are building mega-pig pens in populated areas. They do not conduct public hearings or environmental assessments. They are spoiling the arable land - these places have always been arable land, always,” continues Natalya.

Having decided to say a firm “no” to the plans of the agricultural industrialists, activists applied for a rally in March, but the local administration allowed it to be held only at the end of November - by which time the pig farm would have already been completed, locals fear. Public hearings of the project were also not held, and people had no choice but to record a collective appeal to the president of the country, which does not require formal approval.

To do this, about thirty people gathered in the courtyard of a private house in Lipyaga in March, but their activity was disrupted by an uninvited visit from security forces.

“We talked with them for 40 minutes, found out what they were doing on our territory, because we didn’t invite them. The criminal investigation investigator said that he was looking for a bicycle that was stolen in a neighboring village, but in general they maintain public order, and what are you doing here,” says Natalya.

At first, the initiative group chose a site for the gathering in the neighboring village of Gorlovo - but paddy wagons, representatives of the administration and Agropromkomplektatsiya were already parked there, so the activists went to private territory. Although the security forces came there, the residents managed to record the appeal. However, the visit of law enforcement officers scared people.

Previously, business and officials also resorted to the carrot and stick method: according to activists, residents of the Skopinsky district were offered payment from the company for loyalty, in other cases, people were reported to the police, and public sector employees were threatened with dismissal.

“One woman has already been called to the carpet in Skopin, they came to another woman’s home, like, we’ll fire you. And in general, all state employees fell silent - even those who were not visited,” says Natalya.

People vs pigs

The protesters have a serious opponent - the Agropromkomplektatsiya group of companies, which produces 5% of the country's pork. The agricultural association’s pig farms are already operating in the Tver and Kursk regions, and a whole “pig-breeding cluster” has been conceived for the Ryazan region - five enterprises will appear in several districts at once, each with a capacity of 80 thousand animals.

Previously, Agropromkomplektatsiya only grew wheat, barley, corn and other crops on Ryazan soil, but in 2022 it signed an agreement with the governor of the Ryazan region on the construction of pig farms. Two of them are already operating - “Poplevinsky” in the Ryazhsky district and “Molovsky” in Korablinsky - and the company plans to launch three more by 2030. They will appear in Korablinsky, Starozhilovsky, Skopinsky and Mikhailovsky districts in the form of nine separate enterprises.

“The new project [in the Ryazan region] is very serious for our group of companies. We are entering a new investment phase and plan to invest a total of about 25–30 billion rubles in the development of pig farming and feed processing. I am sure that nothing will interfere with the implementation of this project,” said Sergei Novikov, general director of Agropromkomplektatsiya, at the signing of the agreement with the governor in 2022.

However, obstacles still appeared in the company's path: citizens of several districts, displeased with the immediate proximity to pig farms, went to court.

Lawyer Yuri Konoplin, who led this fight, says that Agropromkomplektatsiya-Ryazan simply does not comply with environmental legislation. Firstly, the company did not conduct public hearings and assess the environmental impact of pig farms - both procedures required by law.

In addition, planned pig farms in the Ryazan region of this scale must belong to the first, highest category of negative impact on the environment - which means that a state environmental assessment of the project must also be carried out before construction begins. In response to this, the company juggles with numbers: instead of 80 thousand pigs at each enterprise, Agropromkomplektatsiya now talks about 4,800 heads of “sows”, although in fact the productivity of pig farms remains the same. This is how businesses underestimate the scale of projects on paper so that they can be recognized as less dangerous and not undergo state environmental examination - after all, the results of the latter can slow down the progress of construction.

In October 2025, activists from the Mikhailovsky district celebrated their victory: they managed in court to challenge regulations allowing the construction of a pig farm next to residential buildings. The head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, drew attention to the litigation and ordered that a criminal case be opened due to violations during construction. However, at the beginning of April, local prosecutors had not started the case.

In April, residents of the Korablinsky district also contacted Bastrykin, whose numerous complaints about pig farms to the regulatory authorities did not bring results. The protesters emphasize that they are not against the development of the agricultural sector as a whole, but they ask that their rights be respected and that enterprises be located away from populated areas.

“People just want these complexes not to be built under their windows, that’s all. Move 10–15 kilometers from here and build your health if you want to implement the food program. But they [business representatives] don’t want to do this, because for this they need to build additional communications, roads, power supplies, and so on,” explains Konoplin.

According to the lawyer’s calculations, if all the planned pig farms start operating, there will be more pigs in the Ryazan region than people, and more than a million people live in the region.

Nature will also suffer: to protect livestock from infections, the regional Ministry of Natural Resources in 2024 ordered the extermination of wild boars within a radius of 30 kilometers from pig farms.

“That will be one pig per person for at least a year. Will people live here or will pigs live? The way they [the business] present everything is wonderful. But they don’t say anything about manure anywhere - and it’s manure that spoils everything: the environment, the air, the water, and the fields,” says Konoplin.

In turn, Agropromkomplektatsiya emphasizes its role as one of the largest employers in the region. Thanks to the launch of pig farms, the number of employees of the agricultural holding in the Ryazan region grew from 175 people at the beginning of 2023 to more than 700 people at the end of 2024, the average salary then reached 70 thousand rubles.

Despite the violations that were recognized by the RF Investigative Committee and the court in the Mikhailovsky district, officials talk about Agropromkomplektatsiya as a responsible business, because the company helps return livestock farming in the Ryazan region to its former results. As a result, after more than twenty years of decline, the region is again close to the livestock numbers of the 1980s.

In response to comments from residents on social networks in February, the regional Ministry of Agriculture responded that concerns about pig farms were “premature and unfounded.” The enterprises will be built far from residential buildings and will be checked for compliance with environmental standards, officials assured.

“Among those who are reviving livestock farming in our region is the Agropromkomplektatsiya Group of Companies. It has been operating in the Ryazan region for seven years and has established itself as a reliable partner who is responsible for compliance with environmental, sanitary standards and social obligations,” noted Dmitry Filippov, Minister of Agriculture and Food of the Ryazan Region in March.

The fruits of the rise of pig farming are on the shelves of both Russians and foreign buyers. While the Russian pork market grew by 16% from 2020 to 2025, agricultural producers are also seeking to expand exports.

Only Agropromkomplektatsiya supplies pork to ten countries and is “conducting large-scale work” to enter the Chinese market.

The Ryazan region produces only 1% of the country's pork, but since 2005 its production has increased almost sixfold. If this goes on, more and more villagers will find themselves in unpleasant proximity to pig farms - as has already happened in Voslebov, protesters fear. Vivid memories of Soviet pig farms do not add to optimism about the future.

“When we went to the village as a child, I remember that halfway through the journey we passed through an area with a pig farm - it was a very small Soviet pig farm, but the smell was simply terrible for several kilometers. I remember how we closed the windows,” recalls Natalya.

But in addition to the careless attitude of agribusiness to environmental legislation, the struggle of Ryazan residents against pig farms exposed another gap in the country’s system of environmental protection: serious contradictions have matured within the environmental community itself.

“Betrayal of us and our interests”

Yuri Konoplin, who lives in Ryazan, became involved in the work against pig farms last year, when residents of the districts turned for help to the Ryazan branch of the Russian Ecological Society (REO), an all-Russian public organization. Then a lawyer in the Ryazan division, Yuri Ivanovich, filed claims on behalf of REO against Agropromkomplektatsiya-Ryazan: in January 2025 - for pig farms in the Mikhailovsky district, in September - in Korablinsky and in January 2026 - in Skopinsky.

Since then, litigation has been based on the activity of Konoplin and the villagers: they independently prepare a line of defense, chip in for state fees and examinations, and this amounts to hundreds of thousands of rubles. According to Konoplin, the head office of REO in Moscow was not directly involved in this work; rather, it “did not interfere” with Ryazan residents defending their rights.

However, in February 2026, the chairman of the REO, Rashid Ismailov, makes an unexpected move: he withdraws the claims of the Ryazan branch against the pig farms, citing the fact that the REO no longer has any reason to consider the activities of Agropromkomplektatsiya illegal and dangerous to nature. The organization also insists that the demands of Ryazan residents to stop the construction of pig farms “run counter to the policy of REO”: society is looking for a balance between economic development and the environment, rather than banning investment projects. And the matter was not limited to pig farms: Ismailov also revoked the powers of attorney of the members of the Ryazan branch of the REO to conduct other affairs - they concerned, for example, landfills, illegal landscaping and other problems.

A month later, the central office of REO changed its position and asked the court to oblige Agropromkomplektatsiya to conduct an assessment of the impact of pig farms on the environment. The chairman of the REO also traveled to Ryazan in March - in his words, to “build an environmental dialogue.” Ismailov proposed creating an environmental council under the regional governor, to which the head of the region, Pavel Malkov, has already agreed.

The contradictory gestures of the capital’s public figure raised a wave of popular indignation: Ryazan residents launched a petition against Ismailov’s participation in the environmental council, calling his actions “a betrayal of residents and their interests.” Due to a conflict with the center, the Ryazan branch of REO announced its dissolution, and its ex-leader Violetta Chernaya and Konoplin created another organization, Rosekozashchita. According to Konoplin, the head of REO takes into account only the interests of business and previously “completely ignored” Ryazan residents.

“After he did this [dropped the claims], he had the conscience to come to Ryazan to propose to the governor to create an environmental council. You see, we already have a lot of these councils and public organizations under the governor - they are all dead souls and a poultice for the dead, their work does not give any significant results,” says Yuri Ivanovich.

The split in REO occurred against the background of the weakening of the independent environmental movement in the country. Russian authorities increased pressure on environmentalists back in the 2010s: the first environmental organizations were included in the list of “foreign agents” in 2014, and today there are already 45 of them. And in 2023, branches of the largest international environmental organizations were expelled from Russia: Greenpeace*, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)* and Bellona* were declared “undesirable”, which criminalized their activities. Individual activists who oppose landfills or cutting down parks in Russian regions are also persecuted.

Professional organizations have been replaced by newly created ones, often close to officials and business. Observers include REO as one of them: the organization’s leadership includes civil servants, and Ismailov himself is associated with a number of government initiatives. In 2022, the chairman of the REO personally appealed to the Ministry of Justice, demanding that Greenpeace and WWF be recognized as foreign agents, since “Russia’s environmental sovereignty is at stake.”

According to Vladimir Asikritov, an independent consultant in the field of environmental policy and sustainable development, the split between the Ryazan branch of REO and the federal leadership highlighted a systemic problem: although such organizations speak the language of civil society, at a critical moment they focus on the interests of government authorities and business.

“At the local level, such organizations are often joined by people who are truly ready to defend nature and their environmental rights. However, at the management level, the goal often turns out to be different - not protecting public interests, but managing the environmental agenda and mitigating acute conflicts in the interests of individual government and corporate structures,” the expert commented.

Если конфликт не затрагивает интересы крупных игроков, такие механизмы еще могут работать: они позволяют точечно улучшать природоохранное регулирование и вовлекать чиновников и бизнес в решение экологических проблем. Но когда речь идет о проектах крупного бизнеса, которые наносят ущерб местной природе, часто выясняется, что общественная организация не защищает интересы людей, а прежде всего смягчает сам конфликт, отмечает Асикритов.

«Для тех, кто защищает свой дом, воду и воздух, это выглядит так, будто у них забирают главный «щит» именно в тот момент, когда давление наконец начинает работать. К сожалению, это не исключение, а свойство самой модели подобных организаций», — заключает эксперт.

Спасительные технологии?

Пока Российское экологическое общество смягчилось в части застраивания Рязанской области свинокомплексами, другие общественники предлагают свои решения — более или менее радикальные.

Собранная экологами статистика показывает, что опасения рязанцев не беспочвенны: нарушения закона со стороны животноводческих предприятий в России — не редкость. Общественная организация «Голоса за животных» в прошлом году насчитала в 40 регионах страны 65 таких случаев, из них 15 нарушений — на свинокомплексах. Эксперты организации отмечают, что на свиноводческих предприятиях не хватает мощностей для должной переработки навоза, субсидии для их внедрения нет, а проверки контролирующими органами фактически не проводятся. В итоге скотобойни регулярно загрязняют отходами водоемы и почвы в регионах страны.

Судя по пресс-релизам «Агропромкомлектации», рязанской земле это не грозит: свинокомплексы оборудованы современной техникой, которая позволяет устранить запахи уже на расстоянии 200 метров от предприятий, отмечает компания. Жидкие отходы отправляются в изолированные лагуны, а твердые — на специальные площадки.

Но люди не верят этим заявлениям. Наталья опасается, что вместе с грунтовыми водами отходы свинокомплекса просто потекут к ней в село — оно стоит в низине. К тому же рядом — река Сухая Тобола, впадающая в Дон, и родники, откуда местные берут воду.

Чтобы снизить нагрузку свиноферм на природу и остудить социальные конфликты, «Голоса за животных» предлагают обратное тому, чего хочет бизнес: не наращивать, а сокращать поголовье скота.

Засилье животного белка организация призывает разнообразить растительным — его вариации мог бы предлагать населению тот же агробизнес.

Природоохранный проект «Земля касается каждого» видит решение в новых технологиях. До сих пор выдерживание навоза в лагунах, отравляющее жизнь соседям свинокомплексов, отнесено в России к списку наилучших доступных технологий (НДТ) — а именно на него ориентируются промышленники, обосновывая свои проекты. По мнению экологов, в список НДТ вместо лагун пора внести технологию сбраживания отходов в специальных установках — газовых метантенках. Это позволит не только решить проблему запахов, но и улавливать метан — мощный парниковый газ, нагревающий планету. Тогда вместо потери метана в атмосферу его можно будет использовать для получения электричества и тепла.

Но до пришествия новых технологий еще нужно дожить — а пока рязанцы не оставляют борьбу. Жители Скопинского района уже присоединяются к искам их соседей из других районов, а Юрий Коноплин проводит свои будни в судах. Хотя сам юрист живет в отдалении от свинокомплексов и работает «на чистом энтузиазме», он не планирует оставлять сельчан один на один с агропромышленниками: «А кто им еще будет помогать? Они больше никому не нужны».

На момент публикации материала «Агропромкомплектация» не ответила на запрос «Новой» с просьбой о комментарии.

Лана Коралова

* Признаны нежелательными организациями в России.