Transformation of food security of the border region in the face of external challenges: a case study of Kaliningrad Oblast

Abstract

Foreign trade relations of Russia in the 2010s developed in the context of various geopolitical challenges, which led to a radical transformation of the volume and geography of export-import operations, including the food sector. The 2014 embargo triggered an intensification of the import substitution policy in the Russian agriculture and food production. The value of the import component in the food market, the basic level of agriculture and food production development, and the level of diversification and localisation of raw material relations of enterprises acted as differentiating factors in the influence of new external challenges on the food security of the regions. Kaliningrad Oblast is of particular interest for studying the transformation of food security, taking into account the exclave position, the low level of agriculture development a decade ago, close export-import relations with European countries until 2014. The paper calculates food security indicators, analyses territorial and sectoral shifts in agriculture and food production, and estimates changes in the import component in the food market of Kaliningrad Oblast. The data of the federal state statistics service, the Kaliningrad regional customs, as well as the results of expert interviews and visual observations conducted by the authors in August 2020 are used. It was revealed that the transformation of food security in Kaliningrad Oblast, on the one hand, reflected national trends, and, on the other hand, had unique features. The latter were characteristic of changes in the food independence of the region. Its increase was associated with the rapid growth of agriculture with a high return of government support. In addition, there was a relatively dispersed distribution of key centers of agricultural production, atypical for many regions of “mainland” Russia. The beneficiaries of the free niches on the market, which opened after the food embargo in 2014, as in most of the territory of Russia, were large agroholdings, but many of them, in contrast to those located in the interior regions of the country, were rather acutely experiencing the ruptures of raw materials ties.