Special Legume-Based Food as a Solution to Food and Nutrition Insecurity Problem in the Arctic

Background

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:

• •

  Extreme climatic conditions;

• •

  Demographic factors (small and sparsely located communities);

• •

  Existing consumption rate and the one recommended by international standards;

• •

  Relation between permanently residing and recruited population;

• •

  Domestic agricultural output;

• •

  Seasonal limitations of the food supply.