Abstract
Amid the progressing growth in the world's population, changing climate conditions, and increasing demand, food production transforms to ensure food security for the mankind. On the national level, the concept of food security is defined as an economic and agro-industrial capacity of a country, which allows the people consuming environmentally friendly and healthy food products on a continuing basis, at reasonable prices, and above the scientifically based nutrition threshold. In circumpolar territories, the people are especially vulnerable to food and nutrition insecurity due to a number of reasons, including severe climate, underdevelopment of local agricultural production, heavy reliance on imported food, higher nutrition requirements, among others. This chapter discusses the potential of legume-based food products to contribute to the improvement of food and nutrition security in northern communities.
TopBackground
The issue of food security is especially relevant in the Arctic zone of Russia, the biggest and the most sparsely-inhabited circumpolar territory in the North, where settlements are extremely remote from the mainland, almost isolated during long winter, and thus critically dependent on the stable supply of high-nutritious food. The relevancy of the issue is confirmed by the high level of attention paid to the development of food production and ensurance of food security in the High North by the Russian government, research institutions, and non-governmental organizations.
Establishment of food and nutrition security in the Arctic should be considered not only in the view of expenses. It is a composition of many factors, including the contamination of food products by various kinds of xenobiotics, geography, climate change effects, lack of the advanced infrastructure, various economic issues, and other factors (Inuit Circumpolar Council, 2012; Rautio et al., 2015). Numerous studies in the sphere of food supply in the Arctic have all arrived at common conclusion: the principal priority in the establishment of a food supply system in circumpolar territories is the development of a sociological form of food supply system based on the import of the majority of food and agricultural products (Polbitsyn, Drokin, & Zhuravlev, 2012).
According to Ivanov and Ivanova (2017), the rationale and necessity of food provision of people inhabiting the circumpolar territories are determined by the following factors:
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Extreme climatic conditions;
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Demographic factors (small and sparsely located communities);
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Existing consumption rate and the one recommended by international standards;
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Relation between permanently residing and recruited population;
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Domestic agricultural output;
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Seasonal limitations of the food supply.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Macronutrients: The food substances (proteins, fats, and carbohydrates) necessary for plastic, energetic, and other needs a body in the quantities measured in grams.
Micronutrients: The food substances (vitamins, minerals, and microelements) contained in food in very small quantities – milligrams or micrograms. They are not sources of energy, yet they are involved in the assimilation of food, regulation of functions, implementation of growth processes, and adaptation and development of an organism.
Nutrients: The constituent parts of food products that are used by the body as energy sources, sources or predecessors of substrates for the creation, growth, and renewal of organs and tissues, the formation of physiologically active substances involved in the regulation of life processes, and that determine the nutritional value of food products.
Nutritional Value of a Product: A set of properties of the food product, in the presence of which a person’s physiological needs in the necessary substances and energy are met.
Beans: A leguminous plant.
Energy Value: The amount of energy in kilocalories released from the food products in the human body to ensure its physiological functions.