Semi-century dynamics of the Russian catch, import, export, and consumption of fish products

Abstract

Dynamics of catch, import, export, and consumption of fish products are analyzed for 1970–2020 on the data of Russian Federal State Statistics Service. Despite steady increasing of the annual catch since 2004, the consumption still does not reach neither the target level claimed by the Food Security Doctrine, nor the norm established by Federal Service for supervision of the consumer rights protection and human welfare, nor even its volume before 1990. The import of fish products (12–47 % of the domestic catch, by years) does not save the situation, because of exponential increase of the export with the catch increasing (from 31 % of the catch in 2000 to 61 % in 2020). This effect made a statistically significant negative impact on the domestic consumption since 2013, when the export exceeded US$ 3.5 billion per year. Now the more fish products are caught, the more they are sold abroad, mainly to unfriendly countries participated in the sanction war against Russia, with detriment to national food security. It is proposed to change the rules of foreign trade: to allow the fish products export abroad only after fulfillment of the norms for their delivery to the domestic market.