Strategic food balance planning methodology: areas of improvement and validation results

The study focuses on the need to improve the food balances forecasting and formation methodology which, unlike the previous one, should consider the requirements of the 2020 RF Food Security Doctrine. The author hypothesizes that the strategic food balance planning methodology should be clarified by its application algorithm and extended with the indicators characterizing the status of the key food security criteria per capita. The paper provides author's interpretation of the food security criteria and gives the indicators for their evaluation which conceptually underlie the development of the strategic food balance planning tools. The first stage of the research complements the structure of the food balance with a number of significant indicators which reveal the deficit (abundance) level of the sources for food resources and domestic consumption of the goods against the approved reasonable norms. The second stage proposes the food balance data based indicators for evaluating national food security. The thresholds of these indicators have been clarified, while these indicators identify the development degree of the key food criteria. This arises from the available sources in the country in general and their types in particular. The third stage of the research deals with validating the author's methodology by the main types of goods specified in the RF Food Security Doctrine. The results of the research show that the current physical accessibility and economic affordability of the main types of foodstuff to the RF population could be maintained at the level of the reasonable norms against the goods reserves only within a short period of time. Domestic production should strategically back up food security in the long-term perspective. Further research is seen to be in improving the food balance strategic planning methodology in order to develop an algorithm for a computerbased information system designed to support managerial decision making in a food security sector. This gives qualitatively new prerequisites for strategic food balance planning digitalization.