Structural and regional features of the development of Russia’s agri-food exports

Abstract

The recent interest in the topic of agri-food exports is caused by investment activity in agriculture after 2014 and, as a consequence, the positive dynamics of the main indicators of the industry's development. Russia’s food exports has grown more than 15 times since the early 2000s, and the dozens of countries around the world buy this food. At the same time, there are structural and regional features that indicate the limited results achieved in foreign trade, but Russia’s agri-food exports are growing only at the expense of three categories of goods (grain, vegetable oil and fish) with a lower added value than by top-processed food products. It is noted that despite the large number of importing countries, only a few of them purchase significant volumes of Russia’s food. The aim of the study is to quantify the regional differences in the involvement of the territory in the export of food and agricultural raw materials. The assessment showed that most of the Russia’s regions are poorly involved in foreign trade, therefore more than half of all food exports belong to several regions that have a large seaport and produce one of the three main food products. Based on the assessment results, a typology of Russia’s regions is presented according to the criterion of involvement in Russia’s export of agricultural products, taking into account the characteristics of exported products (upper, middle or lower processing). The results obtained make it possible to assess the real export activity of the agroindustrial sector of the regions and the potential for its increase in the future. To calculate the dynamics and regional distribution of Russia’s food exports we used the database of the Federal Customs Service of Russia (HS codes 01-24). In the article, we also calculated the Balassa index and the export diversification index, modified for analyzing the involvement of Russia’s regions in the export of agricultural products.