The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is the top destination for Russian food exports, grains in particular. Focusing on Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, this chapter shows that Russia's food trade with MENA countries is strongly affected by bilateral political relations. Russia banned most food imports from Turkey over a political conflict in 2016. In the same year, improved intergovernmental cooperation with Saudi Arabia resulted in a diversification of Russia's food exports to the Gulf country, and in 2019, Iran's accession to the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) led to increasing food trade with Russia. Food imports in MENA countries are usually managed by powerful state trading enterprises (STEs), which recurrently disapprove food products originating from Russia based on non-adherence to food quality standards. Our analysis shows that Russia is successfully working to open additional destination markets, while simultaneously impeding imports of food products that it aims to produce domestically.
Inclui correções e alterações sugeridas pelo Júri. ; The COVID-19 pandemic is the disaster of the 21st century, the disease that shook the world and change life of entire populations. Its tremendous negative impact on economy caused permanent changes in organizational functioning, triggering companies to create crisis management strategies and adopt new innovative practices. The agro-sector was not an exemption. Considering that this sector manifests constant growth related to not only the increase of human population, but also to continuous life-style changes, it is crucial to develop recovery strategies on organizational and governmental levels. Therefore this study provides the general overview of crisis management concept with its main characteristics and frameworks; analyses the importance of innovation in agro-sector; offers agro-sector overview; examines the pandemic's impact on this particular sector and some of the recovery strategies; and explores the attitudes of agro-sector professionals towards COVID-19 crisis in two countries – Portugal and Russia. This research intends to discover differences and similarities in crisis management solutions between agro business professionals in both countries, as well as possible approaches to crisis outcome minimization. ; A pandemia COVID-19 é a tragédia do século XXI, a doença que abalou o mundo e mudou a vida de populações inteiras. O seu forte impacto negativo na economia provocou mudanças permanentes no funcionamento organizacional, levando as empresas a criar estratégias de gestão de crise e a adotar as novas práticas inovadoras. O setor agrícola não foi a exceção. Visto que este sector demonstra um crescimento constante relacionado não apenas com o aumento da população a nível mundial, mas também com as mudanças contínuas no seu estilo de vida, um desenvolvimento de estratégias de recuperação a nível organizacional e governamental torna-se imperativo. Deste modo, este estudo oferece um panorama geral do conceito de gestão de crise com as suas principais características e estruturas; analisa a importância da inovação no setor agrícola; oferece uma visão geral do setor; apresenta o impacto da pandemia neste sector e algumas das estratégias de recuperação; por fim, explora as atitudes dos profissionais do setor agrícola em relação à crise da COVID-19 em dois países – em Portugal e na Rússia. Esta investigação pretende descobrir as diferenças e semelhanças nas soluções de gestão de crise entre os profissionais de agro-negócios de ambos os países, bem como os possíveis abordagens relativamente à minimização dos impactos da crise.