What does the concept of ‘food security’ involve?
You can divide this term into two elements. Firstly, rationed provision of food to the military, plans for storage of food and special rationed provision during a special period, such as war or emergencies. Secondly, system security ensured by the establishment of permanent production, processing and storage facilities on the territory. The state is in charge of the first element, and the second element is managed by local self-government bodies.
What is food security from a systematic perspective?
A systematic approach is about providing municipalities with multi-level processing of products locally in order to avoid the use of raw materials only. For example, leaving products at its production site for further processing and storage.
To understand how it works, I will give an example based on a pre-war municipality in the Luhansk Oblast. Tomatoes from Stanytsia Luhanska are a well-known product; they were produced in large quantities for sale. In this case, to ensure food security, these tomatoes would have to be processed into tomato paste and remain in storage in the municipality to provide them to the people living there in case of emergencies or military operations. Instead, we had huge harvests that resulted in a surplus in a certain period of time and a shortage or price hikes for these products in the autumn and winter period.
What are the main challenges in ensuring food security in municipalities?
One of the main challenges is the storing and processing the grown crops. Often, although there is a lot of produce, the capacities for storing or processing it for further use are lacking. This can lead to a surplus in one period of time and a deficit in other periods. The lack of care when it comes to the processing and storage of products is a serious problem.
Here is a case from the Sumy Oblast. The Znob-Novhorodske municipality received some financial assistance from U-LEAD and created the Agrarian Service. The service was created to provide food products to socially vulnerable groups of people. As part of the project, a large crop of potatoes was grown, sufficient to cover the population’s needs, and there was a lot of surplus left. The municipality is currently considering the processing options for these products. And this is the second question that the municipality has come to.
The harvest could be used to make, for example, borscht kits for the civilian population or for the Armed Forces. However, while simple in terms of its composition this issue is exceedingly complex from the organisational perspective. This is about the cooperation of the municipality with the population and with the local businesses, about the search for additional financing for the procurement of processing equipment, etc.
What incentives can address these problems?
It is important for municipalities to consider food security as part of the full cycle, from cultivation to processing and storage. Efforts in this direction can start with studying the needs and capabilities of the population and existing households, local businesses.
For instance, vegetable products are often produced by private households, which usually produce vegetables of different varieties, of different quality and in different volumes. In order for it to reach the processor, there must be an arrangement in place that would allow the local self-government body to find out the capabilities of households and, based on the information about the volumes, negotiate with processors and suppliers. This information will give businesses an understanding of the volume of products that can be sold and the load on the product processing lines for a certain period of time.
This arrangement is very complex, and some of it is implemented through agricultural cooperatives. However, there is an issue of organising people to cultivate products according to a certain order, varieties, quality. To an extent, municipalities can do this through businesses that supply food in the education system. We all know that many local cantines work with local ingredients. That is, local self-government bodies should handle the volume of produce and ensure sustainability, in case something happens similar to the situation in 2022, when all supermarkets were closed in the early days of the war.
Do the approaches to handling ‘food security’ differ in rear and front-line municipalities?
I believe that they do. After all, we are talking about processing capacity and storage. Placing such facilities near the front lines is very dangerous. What should the municipalities on the contact line or along the border with the aggressor do? The answer is simple — inter-municipal cooperation of municipalities. How does it work? Certain products are grown in the border municipalities and further stored and processed in the rear ones. Moreover, it is important for border municipalities to ensure partial storage of products that have been already processed — such as dried mixes or cereals — in households. These efforts are necessary in order to ensure that the municipality has resources in case of an emergency.
There were cases when the municipalities were encircled, and the heads of the municipalities took steps to ensure a certain supply of flour or cereals for a certain period of time. I believe this to be a great example of cooperation: cultivating here and processing there.
Municipalities can also join forces to grow and process produce together to provide themselves with other necessary resources and preserve food for the long term. In addition to ensuring access to food resources, food security in wartime provides important psychological and physical stability to a municipality under stress and in the situation of limited resources.
What steps do municipalities need to take to ensure food security?
To put it simply, there are three steps. First, the municipality should study the needs and capabilities of its residents, each household. Second, find financing and partners for the procurement of certain equipment for processing agricultural products. Third, establish inter-municipal cooperation and the use of surpluses.
This process is a creative component that has no limits. This process is very important not only from the perspective of providing the population with food in certain emergency situations, but also because Ukraine is approaching the EU integration. The European Union has certain rules regarding the establishment of food processing centres that evaluate the processing of certain products on the ground.