The doctrine of food security in the segment of «vegetables» and «vegetable seeds» is in deep crisis

Posted on 01.07.2026 by secretar
UDC 635.011
https://doi.org/10.25630/PAV.2026.49.27.001

Sirota S.M.

Taking into account the key role of vegetables in disease prevention, maintaining human immunity, etc. in many countries, there are government programs to promote healthy eating, where vegetables play a significant role. The promotion of a healthy diet has caused an increase in vegetable consumption, against this background, there is an increase in the production of vegetable products in the world. In Russia, per capita vegetable consumption lags far behind recommended medical standards. The main supplier of marketable vegetables to the shelves of retail chains is the organized sector of agricultural production (open and protected soil vegetable growing) - a market share of about 70%. Over the past decade, we have noted the construction of new industrial complexes and, consequently, an increase in the area of protected soil. Unfortunately, the opposite picture is in open-field vegetable growing - there is a clear tendency to reduce the area. And, if earlier there was a question about import substitution of protected soil products, today there is a situation where imports require open-ground vegetable crops (onions, carrots, beets, cabbage, etc.). The shortage of vegetable products on the Russian market contributes to rising prices in both wholesale and retail trade, which exacerbates the physical availability of vegetables for Russians, even though they are readily available on retail shelves. The public is being misled by official authorities (the Ministry of Agriculture, Rosstat) about sufficient volumes of vegetable production, assigning a crucial role in supplying the country's population to personal subsidiary farms, where it is not possible to establish the reliability of production volumes. But in reality, there is a shortage of vitamin products in the diet of the Russian population, which negatively affects the health, life expectancy and working capacity of the country's citizens. The current situation in open-ground vegetable growing requires drastic measures, as it was done at the time to restore protected-ground vegetable growing. The purpose of this article is to analyze the state of Russian vegetable growing and the vegetable market, to identify the sources of vegetable supply and the share of each in the balance of the Russian vegetable market, to show trends in global vegetable growing and how this generally affects the level of vegetable consumption by Russians, to make proposals for the restoration and development of domestic vegetable growing.

Key words: medical standard of vegetable consumption, vegetable growing, vegetable crop areas, nutrition policy, food security, breeding, seed production, import, dumping

Sirota S.M., D.Sci. (Agr.), director general Georgievskoe Sortsemovoshch Ltd. E-mail: georgievsk7ena@yandex.ru

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For citing: Sirota S.M. The doctrine of food security in the segment of «vegetables» and «vegetable seeds» is in deep crisis. Potato and vegetables. 2026. No4. Pp. 50–56. https://doi.org/10.25630/PAV.2026.49.27.001

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