Towards Better Understanding of Socioeconomic Resilience Challenges in Food Systems of the Baltic States: Focus on Agriculture

Global food systems have faced multiple shocks that threaten the implementation of their main functions. This article analyzes the most recent studies and aims to develop a socioeconomic resilience assessment dashboard for agriculture as a component of the food system and estimate the resilience of the Baltic states in 2013 and 2023. The selected years allow us to compare resilience before and after the most recent agricultural market crisis. The resilience assessment dashboard includes leading and lagging indicators and uses the distance to a reference measure normalization method to compare resilience indicators in individual countries with the EU average. Leading indicators, focusing on the ability of the system to implement changes, distinguish the Estonian case and suggest that structural patterns of this country could empower different actions to increase resilience compared to other Baltic states. Lagging indicators, focusing on the key functions of the system, suggest that the Baltic states have improved their nutritional security; however, this research identifies a high concentration of ex-EU imports for the fats and oils group, the animal products group, except for the CN03 category, and the vegetable products group, with the exception of the CN08 and CN09 categories, as an important resilience challenge of national food security. The results imply the importance of policy actions aiming at the further development of national trade networks and the diversification of import markets. Farm economic viability indicators, except for debt ratio, evidence annual instability and unfavorable resilience compared to the EU average, while, in Latvia and Lithuania, agriculture remains an important employer and contributes to the resilience of national economies. The analyzed leading indicators suggest that the Baltic states could prioritize different agricultural policy actions and budget allocation addressing national farm viability and agricultural employment challenges.