ENSURING FOOD SECURITY OF UKRAINE: POST-WAR CONTEXT

Abstract

Ensuring food security at the national and global levels on the basis of sustainability is one of the priorities of Ukraine's agrarian policy. In the pre-war period, the domestic agricultural sector guaranteed a high level of food security in our country and significantly influenced the saturation of the global food market. However, the ongoing war in Ukraine caused ruinations in the field of production and sale of agro-food products, negatively affecting the state of the food market. In the period of hostilities, the significance of the problem of ensuring national food security increases manifold, although Ukraine has sufficient food reserves. The war in Ukraine significantly reduced the scale of agricultural production and changed its structure, which in the near future will affect the dynamics of agricultural production and the state of national food security. In addition, hostilities negatively affects the incomes of the population, so the share of food expenditure in total expenditure, which is one of the key indicators of food security, will grow. This indicates the need to take measures to increase food affordability and domestic food demand. The restoration and further growth of the level of food security of Ukrainian population in the post-war period, as well as the development of agro-food exports, will require a transition to the implementation of long-term goals of ensuring national food security by increasing the volume and range of agro-food production as a result of its innovative modernization and structural transformation of agriculture. The strategic direction of the agricultural sector modernization should be based on the concept of environmentally friendly resource-conserving agriculture, which will ensure: preservation and restoration of agricultural land fertility as a decisive factor of food security in the long term; improving the quality of food for the population; expansion of the export potential of agro-food products due to high-quality goods with higher added value.