The Potential for Food Forest Harvesting Revenue Increase

At present, many developed countries of the world use such foods as mushrooms and berries as well as a variety of produce resulting from their processing. Among the products that are gaining popularity are environmentally clean foods, healthy lifestyle produce, foods for vegans and other population categories with special dietary requirements. Additionally, berry and mushroom processing byproducts are widely used in medicine and medical cosmetics. The dynamics of mushroom and berry production as well as of their export and import is increasing steadily in Western and Eastern countries alike. Russia has an enormous potential with its immense resources of wild mushrooms and berries, which are barely utilized: the harvesting of wild-growing plants and mushrooms constitutes no more than centesimals of one per cent of their biological stock. The aim of this study is to identify the opportunities for increasing the volume of harvesting food forest resources and the revenue from this activity, which is to flow into the budget system of the Russian Federation. The economic methods used in the research included those of vertical and horizontal analysis, scenario planning, economic modelling and logical-analytic methods. Given the considerable gains from food forest resources, even a small increase in the volumes of wild mushroom and berry harvesting can yield a substantial increase in the forest revenue, which is confirmed by the forecast offered in the article. The authors outline the key directions of the government policy conducive to attaining the goals set in the research.