Suchergebnisse

This year confirmed an ambiguous situation with food security in Russia. On the one hand, the government insists on the achieved sustainable food self-sufficiency/sovereignty: "Russia is self-sufficient in all basic types of food", "the level of food security in Russia is one of the most reliable in the world", "the Eurasian Economic Union has reached a level of self-sufficiency in most food products (grain, vegetable oils, pork, lamb, sugar, eggs)". The Russian leadership admits the "very complex nature" of food sovereignty as depending on climate change, population growth, trade wars, sanctions, and so on. However, the official discourse emphasizes that "we should not be pessimists", "a country striving to be sovereign must provide itself with food", and Russia solves this task so successfully that has become one of the largest food exporters. Therefore, "in 2023, food inflation in Russia will be one of the lowest in the world due to self-sufficiency in basic products" and "systemic measures of anti-crisis support for enterprises and sectors that ensure food security" . Since mid-2020, rising prices on world markets have determined higher prices on domestic markets, and high food inflation affected many countries. In Russia, food inflation is lower compared to other regions (10% vs 19.1% in the EU or 14.9% in the OECD), and the rate of increase in food prices is lower than general inflation, while in other countries food prices became key drivers of accelerating retail prices. The article considers Russia's measures for keeping food prices down and its population's everyday food-consumer practices for keeping usual diet under rising prices. The survey confirmed the persistent inconsistency of Russians' assessment of food practices, which can be explained by the trend to 'normalize' one's life situation in general and in its most essential part (daily diet) in particular.

Despite the purposeful governmental programs, agricultural cooperation in Russia is not developing - on the contrary, the number of cooperatives has been continuously declining. This study investigates the reasons for farmers' refusal to join cooperatives. A prepared questionnaire was distributed in one of the Russian regions (the Republic of Tatarstan), and the collected data were analyzed via the cross tabulation method and logit analysis. According to the study results, the major reasons for not cooperating are as follows: respondent farmers lack the experience of cooperation, they have problems trusting each other, they are not socially active in their communities, and they rarely have a higher education. The study results recommend that the Ministry of Agriculture, willing to develop agricultural cooperation, pay special attention to educating farmers in terms of cooperation. Particular work should be done in teaching farmers to work in groups, trust each other, and organize systems of cooperative ventures in a way that would exclude cheating and free-riding behavior on the parts of both the cooperative members and the leaders. Stimulating social activities among farmers in rural areas might also increase cooperation. In addition, there is a need for agricultural consulting services offering high quality educational courses explaining the advantages of cooperatives and profits that they may provide to the members.