Shagaida N.I., Ternovsky D.S., Trotsuk I.V. Russia’s ways to ensure food security (control food prices) in 2020–2022, and their impact on consumers // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №3. P. 87-112.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-3-87-112

Annotation

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”2 ; “the level of food security in Russia is one of the most reliable in the world”3; “the Eurasian Economic Union has reached a level of self-sufficiency in most food products (grain, vegetable oils, pork, lamb, sugar, eggs)”4. The Russian leadership admits the “very complex nature” of food sovereignty as depending on climate change, population growth, trade wars, sanctions, and so on5. 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” 6 and “systemic measures of anti-crisis support for enterprises and sectors that ensure food security”7 . 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. 

Keywords

Rising food prices, foreign and domestic markets, food inflation, food prices volatility, food (in)security, (everyday) food-consumer practices, economic and physical access to food, sociological data.

About the authors

Shagaida Natalia I., DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ternovsky Denis S., DSc (Economics), Senior Researcher, Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Trotsuk Irina V., DSc (Sociology), Professor, Sociology Department, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Shagaida N. I., Trotsuk I. V. Russia’s food security under the crisis of 2020–2021: Objective and subjective dimensions // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №2. P. 93-121.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-2-93-121

Annotation

The article presents the results of the assessment of Russia’s food security in 2020–2021 based on the available statistical data and sociological monitoring of the population’s ‘food well-being’ conducted since 2015 by the Center for Agro-Food Policy of the RANEPA. The authors believe that the pandemic risks for Russian agriculture were limited, and agricultural production ensured a high level of food self-sufficiency. Although the physical access to food remained at the same level, the economic access has deteriorated; however, Russian families managed to keep their usual diet by redirecting the money saved due to the pandemic restrictions to food consumption. Rising food prices have become the most important problem under the crisis, and to solve it, the Russian government has used a wide range of measures — from reducing duties on food imports and temporary bans on food exports to setting marginal retail prices for certain food products. The sociological assessment of the population’s ‘food well-being’ (the all-Russian telephone survey) showed that the families’ requirements to the access to food are rather modest due to the huge credit of patience and sustainable practices of adaptation to the objective social-economic restrictions. Given the achieved indicators of Russia’s food self-sufficiency according to the Food Security Doctrine, the state should shift its focus from food self-sufficiency (and increasing exports) to the economic access of the population to food.

Keywords

Food security, food well-being, self-sufficiency, economic and physical access to food, pandemic, statistical and sociological data.

About the authors

Shagaida Natalia I., DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Trotsuk Irina V., DSc (Sociology), Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University; Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Shagaida N.I., Nikulin A.M. “All generations of my family... have been involved in global agrarian transformations” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2021. V.6. №2. P. 121-153.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-2-121-153

Annotation

In the biographical interview, N.I. Shagaida, DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy of the RANEPA, considers the historical roots of the development of the Soviet agrarian system on the examples of her life experience and her family generations involved in agricultural activities in different regions of the former USSR. The interview focuses on her reflections on the peculiarities of agrarian university and academic organizations and on the role of outstanding scientists as determining the results of research teams and the horizons of agrarian sciences. The article presents the milestones in N.I. Shagaida’s scientific research as coinciding with the key stages in restructuring and reforming the Soviet and post-Soviet agrarian system, especially with the social-economic experiments and transformations under the reform of the Soviet collective-farm and state-farm system in the Nizhny Novgorod Region and other regions of the Russian Federation in the 1990s, and with the creation of rural development institutions in Lodeynopolsky district of the Leningrad Region. N.I. Shagaida emphasizes that for the successful and sustainable agrarian transformations, science and government have to work systematically in pilot regional projects in order to take into account opinions, requests and estimates of the rural population and local rural leaders in the development and adaptation of the daily innovations under the necessary agrarian changes. Thus, the interview questions the strategic goals of the state in the regulation of land relations, food security, agricultural production and the Russian rural development in general.

Keywords

Family, school, science, USSR, perestroika, reform, agricultural enterprises, land, rural development.

About the authors

Shagaida Natalia I., DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Shagaida N.I. Institutional restructuring of agriculture is complete: what is next? // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №1. P. 173-178.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-1-173-178

About the author

Shagaida Natalia I., DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Krylatykh E.N., Lerman Z., Strokov A.S., Uzun V.Ya., Shagaida N.I. Round table “Assessment of structural changes in agriculture: Methodological approaches and estimated results” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2018. V.3. №2. P. 102-126.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2018-3-2-102-126

Annotation

The round table on the “Assessment of structural changes in agriculture: Methodological approaches and estimated results” was held under the leadership of Natalia Ivanovna Shagaida, head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, and consisted of two main reports and discussion on them. The first report “International methodological approaches to assessing structural changes in agriculture” was presented by Zvi Lerman, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Uzun Vasily Yakimovich, chief researcher of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, presented the second report “Assessment of structural changes in Russian agriculture: Hypotheses and research methods”. Professor Lerman conducted a comparative analysis of the dynamics of various indicators of structural changes in agriculture of such post-socialist countries as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Professor Uzun was a co-rapporteur of professor Lerman and described structural changes in Russian agriculture paying special attention to the institutional components of agrarian structural changes associated with the interrelation of large and small forms of agricultural production. At the end of the seminar, the discussion focused on the phenomenon of agroholdings as the main factor of diverse and ambiguous agrarian changes in the contemporary Russian agriculture. 

Keywords

Agriculture, post-socialist countries, structural changes, agroholdings, research methods.

About the authors

Krylatykh Elmira N., academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, DSc (Economics), Head of the Department of Organizational Management, Higher School of Corporate Management, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 84.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Lerman Zvi, Sir Henry d’Avigdor Goldsmid Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, Department of Environmental Economics and Management, Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), P.O. Box 12, Rehovot, 76100, Jerusalem, Israel.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Strokov Anton S., Senior Researcher, Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Uzun Vasily Ya., DSc (Economics), Chief Researcher, Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Shagaida Natalia I., DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agro-Food Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Shagaida N.I. A long-term strategy for the agricultural development in Russia and the world // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №2. P. 161-165.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-2-161-165

About the author

Shagaida Natalia I., DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Agricultural Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Russia, 119571, Moscow, prosp. Vernadskogo, 82.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.