Western farmers take hit from Russia food ban

A woman is picking apples to buy at 1.99 zlotys (euro 0.47) per kilogram at a supermarket in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014, the day when fruit farmers marched in the city intending to encourage Poles to eat more apples and this way offset the expected negative effects of a ban that Russia imposed last week on Polish fruit, a move seen as retaliation for European Union sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine. AP

WASHINGTON — Russian diners won’t be able to find creamy Dutch cheeses or juicy Polish apples in the grocery store or cook up chicken from the United States. That’s all the result of a Russian ban on most food imports from the West.

Although the U.S., Canada and the European Union together will take more than a $17.5 billion hit, Russian consumers may feel the ban more than Western farmers.

Jason Furman is the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He shrugged off the import ban’s impact on the West as negligible. In contrast, he said, Western sanctions on Russian individuals, businesses and economic sectors have sent investors fleeing Russia and made a weak Russian economy even weaker.