Geopolitical Pressures and State Policy Responses in Improving the Agro-Industrial Complex for Russian Food Security and the Economic Growth of the Agro-Industrial

The article discusses the impact of geopolitics and government support responses on the development of the agro-industrial complex (AIC) in Russia. It is important to comprehend how countries reconfigure agricultural policy under geopolitical pressure when it concerns the effectiveness of economic sanctions (ES) and strategies to deal with food security. While there is a considerable amount of literature on ES, there is still a significant gap in understanding the distributional impacts of the ES and structural change in AIC. The article investigates the Russian AIC in 2014–2023 — a period marked by the intensification of Western sanctions following after the return of Crimea to Russia, which was followed by a major escalation of geopolitical tensions in 2022. Using a combination of correlation analysis, expert surveys, and statistical tools, authors assessed government support programs for AIC against different measures of agricultural performance across a number of periods. The findings reveal impressive resilience in agricultural exports (a growth rate of 125%) and significant advances in self-sufficiency for animal products, which improved from 60% to 95% for poultry, as well as some modest advances for vegetable production (a growth rate of 17.33%). Statistical evaluation reveals that there is a very high correlation between targeted subsidies, the volume of agricultural production and growth in exports (r = 0.921), and there has also been a substantial increase in market concentration associated with large agroholdings, whose market share increased from 45% to 82%. The somewhat paradoxical combination of modest production increases with explosive growth in exports indicates a fundamental change in the focus of Russia’s agricultural strategy from import substitution to export opportunities realization. As a result, it is concluded that ES did not overturn Russia’s AIC, but instead have been integral to a significant change that raises difficult issues of state support for the further development of agricultural production in the context of geopolitical pressure.

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