Assessment of regional food markets and their role in ensuring the unity of economic space in the Central Chernozem economic region

Introduction: the need to assess the current state and characteristics of regional food markets is conditioned by their importance for territorial socio-economic systems, the level of population well-being, uniformity of development, and ensuring the unity of economic space. Objectives: to develop and test the methodology for assessing regional food markets and their role in ensuring the unity of economic space in the Central Chernozem economic region. Methods: economic and spatial analysis, general scientific (grouping, comparison, logical, analysis of dynamics, tabular, etc.), as well as special methods (variation, aggregation, coefficient, etc.). Results: the article presents experimental results in developing a toolkit for changing the state of regional food markets according to the criteria: provision, density, saturation of the territory with market activity; degree of concentration, uniformity of market activity; availability of market products (goods); homogeneity, differentiation, asymmetry. A methodology for assessing regional food markets and their role in ensuring the unity of economic space was proposed and tested. Conclusions: the regional food markets of the Central Chernozem economic region had significant differences in density, provision, saturation of the territory with market activity. In 2019–2023 the regions within the Central Chernozem economic region revealed approximately the same level of food products availability, a sufficient homogeneity of concentration and uniformity of market activity, though showing a moderate differentiation and asymmetry, which allows us to state a high level of unity of the economic space of the territory.