Technical Equipment of Agricultural Production: The Effects for Food Security

Introduction

Ensuring a sufficient food supply is one of the most critical challenges in establishing both international and national economic security. In this context, it is important to make a differentiation between food security and food self-sufficiency.

Food self-sufficiency is defined as the ability of a state to meet domestic food needs. The level of food self-sufficiency, calculated as the ratio of its national production to domestic consumption, varies for different countries. It is determined by the effective public demand for food, development of the agro-industrial complex, size of its commodity resources, degree of profitability, and reliability of international food relations (Ibragimov & Dokholyan, 2010).

The concept of food security is not limited to direct provision of food to the population, although this task is its ultimate goal. The food security system also includes the establishment of strategic food stocks; formation of the optimal ratio of food for the country by means of domestic production and import; development of food base of agriculture and the network of enterprises for the processing of raw materials, as well as trade in these raw materials and foodstuffs; expansion of transport networks for the supply of raw materials to food industry and food to consumers (Shapkina, 2012).

The term “food security” is widely used in the literature. In a general sense, it includes various aspects of activities related to the development of agricultural and agro-industrial production, food supply, and provision of targeted social food aid to population. Narrowly defined, food security of a country is the level of dependence on imports of basic types of food. Anisimov, Gapov, Rodionova, and Saurenko (2019) generalized an approach to understanding food security as a state of the global economy which provided physical access to food and economic opportunity to purchase it in the required quantity for all social groups.

Food security is provided by a set of economic and social conditions associated with the development of food production and general state of the national and global economy. Food security level is ensured both by domestic food products and the availability of financial resources to import the required volume of food. Every government in the pursuance of national security interests strives minimizing the degree of potential vulnerability of food security parameters (Khudzhatov, 2018a) and stabilizing food supply amid any external fluctuations (inflation, currency deficit, violations of food imports, embargo on supplies, etc.).

Establishment of food security includes the stability of both internal (preferably) and external food sources, as well as the availability of reserve funds.

The rational level of food security involves optimal use of the agricultural potential of a country for the needs of the domestic market and intensification of foreign economic activity in the terms of import of food and raw materials (in the volume required to close food supply gaps taking into account international division of labor and situation on the global market).

One of the key challenges in establishing food security is the development of domestic agro-industrial complex, which includes production of food and agricultural products and agricultural engineering (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Structure of the agro-industrial complex

Source: Authors’ development based on Khudzhatov (2018b)

Globally, development of agricultural production is hardly possible without using advanced technologies. Their application depends on the provision of agricultural producers with high-efficient agricultural machinery which is a major goal of agricultural mechanical engineering. It is also important to note that the global trade in agricultural machinery allows ensuring food security in the countries where domestic agricultural mechanical engineering is not capable to saturate domestic market with agricultural machinery. The above provisions determined the relevance of this chapter in the context of ensuring food security at a national level.