Territorial and Sectoral Structure of Agriculture and Food Production in the Leningrad Region in the 2010s

Abstract

Many conditions for the development of the agriculture and food production have changed in the 2010s: in addition to the consequences of the economic crises of 2008 and 2014, there were the introduction of restrictions on the import of certain types of agricultural products and food from the EU and a number of other countries, the intensification of import substitution, a new round of attention to food security problems in state political agenda, etc. The paper examines the territorial and sectoral structure of agriculture and food production in the Leningrad region that is simultaneously located in the zone of influence of the largest agglomeration (metropolis) and neighboring EU countries. The analysis showed that the dependence of the territorial structure of agriculture on the state of the largest enterprises has increased, and also there have been some local transformations associated with the emergence of new dairy farms. In the sectoral structure, no fundamental changes were revealed, but in absolute terms, vegetable production increased significantly (“Vyborzhets” in the Vsevolozhsky district), which is directly related to changes in competition due to the food embargo and improved credit policy conditions (though effective only for large enterprises). In the production of food, the production of meat and semi-finished meat products, fish and bakery products increased significantly. However, the territorial structure of production has changed only for bakery products: it shrank to a smaller number of enterprises with a simultaneous increase in concentration and production volumes at “Petrokhleb Group of Companies”. The food embargo of 2014 opened up colossal free niches in the market of St. Petersburg with ca 5 million inhabitants. This could radically affect the production of certain food products in the neighboring Leningrad region, but for a number of reasons this did not happen. These reasons include a decrease in demand due to a drop in the solvent demand of the population during the crisis years, an insignificant raw material base in the region, the use of new opportunities by enterprises in St. Petersburg itself, filling the market with goods from neighboring regions and imported products (especially due to the seaside location and the presence of a seaport).