New Documents, Old Problems. The Availability of Food in Russia

Abstract

Socio-economic changes in the country and in provision of population with food required a serious adjustment of the Doctrine of Food Security. In 2020, its updated version (Doctrine 2020) was adopted. Most innovations in the document have a positive impact on improving the food availability. Disadvantages include a lack of attention to the concept of social accessibility of food, an erroneous understanding of food independence, and an insufficiently integrated approach to ensuring the physical accessibility of food. The paper suggests options for eliminating these shortcomings in subsequent documents. In order to increase the economic availability of food, according to the author, it is necessary to change the methodology for determining the subsistence minimum, which is the material basis for rational nutrition of the population. It is shown that those innovations of the methodology, which began to operate in 2021, will not lead to a significant improvement in the nutrition of the Russian population, since income will objectively lag behind the growth rate of spending on the main set of consumer goods and services. The paper puts forward a proposal to change the methodology for determining the subsistence minimum, denoting the prospects to further increase its value, which will reduce poverty and improve the availability of food products for the population.