Abstrakt: |
Russia's foreign trade relations in the 2010s developed in the face of various geopolitical challenges, which led to a radical transformation in the volume and geography of export–import operations. For the food sector, the key challenge was the food embargo of 2014, which, in turn, intensified import substitution policy in Russian agriculture and food production. The value of imports in the food market, the current level of development of agriculture and food production, the degree of diversification and localization of raw material relationships of enterprises acted as differentiating factors in the impact of new external challenges on the food self-sufficiency of regions. Kaliningrad oblast is of particular interest for studying the transformation of food self-sufficiency, given its exclave position, a low level of agricultural development a decade ago, and close export–import ties with European countries until 2014. The paper assesses food self-sufficiency, analyzes the corresponding territorial and sectoral shifts in agriculture and food production, and considers changes in the import component in the food market of Kaliningrad oblast. The study uses data from the Federal State Statistics Service, the Kaliningrad Oblast Customs Service, and the results of expert interviews and visual observations conducted by the authors in August 2020. It was revealed that transformation of the food self-sufficiency of Kaliningrad oblast, on the one hand, reflects all-Russian trends, and on the other, has unique features. The uniqueness is associated with the rapid growth of agriculture as a result of government support. In addition, there is a relatively dispersed distribution of key centers of agricultural production, atypical of many regions in mainland Russia. The beneficiaries of the free market niches that opened up after the 2014 food embargo, as in most of Russia, were large holdings, but many of them, in contrast to those located in the country's interior, were quite acutely aware of breaks in raw material ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |