This article analyzes the development of food production at the regional level on the example of its most important and of the little-studied industry – baking. The author studies the situation in baking industry and the main reasons of modernization, that hindered the development of industrial production: high depreciation of fixed assets and very slow updating process, the use of morally obsolete equipment and technology, low level of mechanization of labor-intensive processes, low volume of investments; low incentive of enterprises in innovations implementation. The article describes the areas of modernization activity in the Altai Region bread making in the late 1950s – early 1960s such as the intensification and the mechanization of production, advance in technology, increased amount and quality of output, personnel development, the organization of socialist competition as the main method of motivation and labor productivity incentives immanent in the Soviet period; improved industrial management.