Economic Access to Food: Factors and Methods of Assessment

Economic access to food, in contrast to the Doctrine of Food Security, involves providing the population with food, regardless of the source of its origin. The situation with the economic access in Russia as a result of the impact of sanctions and embargoes has complicated and conditions have been created for its regular monitoring, both at the country level and at the level of individual regions. The paper analyzes the conceptual apparatus and the main methodological approaches to assessing economic access. The article presents a method for quantifying the economic access to food, which takes into account the effects of absolute income, food prices in the country and the region, the balance of the diet of the consumer, or the national or local share of food expenditures. An empirical assessment of the economic access in Russia and its subjects has been carried out. The values of the indicator of economic access for Russia as a whole demonstrate a fairly stable situation. The results made it possible to identify a number of factors that ensure an increase in the economic access to the population, including income, the level of prices for basic food products. Indirect influence on the economic access can have the share of the agrarian sector in the economy of the region and the share of small farms in the structure of agricultural production. Methodical development is intended for the governing board.