The Protein Sovereignty Index

Regional assessment

Rest of Europe

We assess non-EU Europe as Exposed (61.6). Upstream dependence binds hardest, at 51: every member except Belarus imports the nitrogen its crops need, and every member except Serbia and Belarus imports most of its feed protein.

This region contains both the most systematic civil food reserve on earth, Switzerland's 690,690 tonnes of legally mandated compulsory stocks,[2] and a member state, Montenegro, whose cereal self-sufficiency has run at roughly 5 per cent.[24]

Access and affordability is, at 77, the region's strongest pillar: most of the population can afford a healthy diet, but Kosovo, the poorest and most price-stressed member, has no data in any of the pillar's core indicators.

Covers: Switzerland, Iceland, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Belarus, Moldova, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Vatican City

The protein system

Thirty-seven million people are split between two structural protein exporters, one hyper-prepared half-importer, one fisheries state and a Balkan tail that buys most of what it eats. Two-thirds of regional consumption sits in three countries: Switzerland and Belarus at about 9.09 million people each and Serbia at 6.55 million.[15]

Every member is above nutritional requirement. Iceland leads the region and much of the world at 151.7 g of protein per day, Serbia follows at 135.6 g and Belarus at 128.0 g, Switzerland sits at 101.4 g and Moldova at the bottom on 93.1 g,[10] only narrowly below Switzerland. What differs is how the protein arrives.

Belarus and Serbia produce their own. Belarusian cereal output reached 8.7 million tonnes in 2025 against import requirements of only 540,000 tonnes,[21] and official figures put milk self-sufficiency at 300 per cent, meat at 140 per cent and eggs at 130 per cent.[25] Serbia expects 3.3 million tonnes of wheat with 1.5 million exportable and 7.1 million tonnes of maize with 2.5 million for export and carryover.[22] The tail is different in kind: Bosnia and Herzegovina imports approximately two-thirds of its food and over half its wheat,[23][24] Albania around 60 per cent of its wheat, North Macedonia around 93 per cent of its poultry, and Montenegro about 95 per cent of its cereals.[24] The microstates, Liechtenstein excepted, produce nothing of consequence.

Durable domestic capacity: 56

Quantitative score 59, adjusted down 3 points

Capacity is bimodal, and the weighted average conceals both extremes. Belarus and Serbia, 42 per cent of regional consumption between them, are producers whose surpluses insulate a neighbourhood: Serbian wheat ending stocks run near 800,000 tonnes,[22] and Belarus exported over USD 10 billion of food to 117 countries in 2025.[27]

Switzerland is the interesting case. Gross self-sufficiency fell to 50 per cent in 2024 and net to 42 per cent, both down four percentage points in one year on a weather-driven collapse in plant production, with cereals at 39 per cent.[1] Its animal sector looks strong at 93 per cent gross and dairy exceeds demand at 106 per cent, yet poultry sits at 58 per cent, and the net animal figure of 68 per cent is the honest one because it strips out imported feed.[1] The Swiss Farmers' Union puts domestically produced protein at 66 per cent of protein consumed for 2021,[8] a producer-organisation figure best read as an upper bound. Iceland records a self-sufficiency ratio of 100 per cent in energy including exports, falling to 53 per cent once exported food is removed.[17][19] That gap is the fish it sells.

The indicators put the pillar at 59; we adjust down 3 on durability rather than level. Serbia's maize crop has been cut by drought for three consecutive years and roughly 60 per cent of the 2024 crop carried aflatoxin;[22] Moldova's 2026 maize output ran around 30 per cent below average;[20] Iceland's capelin, normally a third of landings, produced no quota and no catch in 2024.[16] Three of the four members with the strongest nominal capacity show failures in the same direction.

Resource headroom: 62

Quantitative score 58, adjusted up 4 points

The region has more physical room than anywhere in Europe outside Ukraine, distributed almost inversely to wealth. Moldova holds 0.761 hectares of arable land per person, Belarus 0.607 and Serbia 0.393, against 0.045 for Switzerland, 0.015 for Montenegro and 0.009 for Andorra.[13] Water is abundant across the Alps, the Dinarides and Iceland, so the absolute resource ceilings that define the Gulf do not apply.

Two constraints bind instead. The first is feed intensity: Switzerland eats 25.3 kg of pigmeat and 17.5 kg of poultry per person per year[11] on a fifteenth of Belarus's arable land per head, and imported all 243,015 tonnes of its feed soya in 2024.[7] Its grassland dairy base is land-efficient; its monogastric sector is an import in disguise. The second is Iceland, where protein rests on a wild stock that has shown its limit and growth comes from aquaculture drawing on fishmeal.

The third feature earned an upward adjustment of 4, and realisability evidence collected against the region's largest arable base confirms it rather than overturning it. In the Balkans yields are constrained by money rather than land. Fertiliser use runs at 137.8 kg per hectare of arable land in Serbia, 66.1 in Albania and 51.1 in Moldova, against 198.9 in Belarus,[14] and USDA reports Serbian application falling from 140 kg per hectare in 2016 to under 50 kg with imports down about 30 per cent on price.[22] Serbia has attached money to the gap and it is being spent: the per-hectare crop payment doubled from 9,000 to 18,000 dinars with a further 17,000 for certified seed,[22] the country's agricultural credit orientation index sits at 0.997, close to the parity a functioning capital market implies,[40] and irrigation-equipped arable land has more than tripled since 2006, from 116,000 to 374,050 hectares, 4.5 to 14.7 per cent of the arable base.[41] USDA separately reports soybean sowings rising from 210,000 to a forecast 250,000 hectares in MY2025/26, though the Netherlands' agricultural counsellor network puts Serbian and regional soya acreage down by up to half over the preceding five years;[42][22] the adjustment does not rest on that figure. Moldova adds a second, independently funded case rather than a competing one: the World Bank's USD 55 million AGGRI programme is rehabilitating irrigation, including 2,500 hectares at Stefan Voda and 1,900 hectares at Briceni, though only 11 per cent of its budget had been disbursed by March 2025 and Moldova's own irrigation-equipped share has fallen from 16.5 to 11.7 per cent of arable land since 2000.[43] The credit stops there: Belarus's irrigation-equipped share has collapsed from 2.0 to 0.5 per cent of arable land over the same period,[41] so the region's largest headline land-per-capita figures, Moldova's 0.761 hectares and Belarus's 0.607, remain substantially rain-fed and unbanked rather than mobilisable headroom.

Import exposure: 62

Quantitative score 60, adjusted up 2 points

Overland corridors and diversified sourcing let this region avoid the chokepoint dependence that wealthy fragile importers carry, and the 2026 Gulf conflict has proved the point in live conditions. Belarus needs about 540,000 tonnes of imported cereals a year for 9.1 million people.[21] Serbia imports 5,000 tonnes of wheat while exporting 1.5 million, 30 per cent by Danube barge to Constanta and 70 per cent by rail and road.[22] Switzerland does import roughly half its calories, some 7 million tonnes of agricultural goods worth CHF 15 billion in 2022,[8] but by overland corridors with no single point of failure, and 92.5 per cent of its feed soya now comes from Europe, chiefly Italy at 59 per cent, Ukraine at 15 per cent and Austria at 8 per cent.[7] None of this transits Hormuz, Suez, Malacca or Panama.

We took a net upward adjustment of 2 rather than more, because that advantage is offset twice. None of these states is in the European Union, so they depend on EU neighbours for most imported food while sitting outside the internal market's crisis-solidarity instruments and outside the Common Agricultural Policy; in a genuine European squeeze they queue behind member states. And the tail's dependence is concentrated on one or two adjacent suppliers each: Bosnia on Serbia and Croatia, Kosovo on North Macedonia and a politically unreliable Serbian border, Montenegro on Serbia and the port of Bar, North Macedonia on Thessaloniki.

Upstream dependence: 51

Quantitative score 48, adjusted up 3 points

Upstream is where the system binds, and the region's lowest pillar. Switzerland imported every tonne of its feed soya and over 90 per cent of its feed grain in 2024,[7] and its mineral nitrogen is imported to the point that the Confederation runs a dedicated compulsory stockholding cooperative for it, Agricura.[4][9] Iceland imports all fertiliser and effectively all feed grain.[18] Serbia buys about 800,000 tonnes of fertiliser a year from Russia, Ukraine, Croatia, Romania and Hungary.[22]

The 2026 shock arrives through prices rather than cargoes. Roughly 20 to 30 per cent of world fertiliser exports and half of all global sulphur shipments normally pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and world fertiliser prices have risen about 25 per cent since it closed.[29] For members already applying a third of the nitrogen their soils would take, that is forgone yield.

Belarus is the counterweight and the reason for an upward adjustment of 3 rather than none. It is the world's second-largest potash producer, accounts for around 15 per cent of global fertiliser production,[29] and Grodno Azot exists expressly to satisfy domestic agricultural nitrogen demand.[32] The uplift is small because that capability is walled off from its neighbours. Potash output collapsed to about 3 million tonnes in 2022 and its share of world production fell from around 20 per cent to 9 per cent after Klaipeda transit was lost,[28] export earnings fell from almost USD 2.5 billion in 2020 to just over USD 1 billion in 2024,[29] and EU duties escalate to EUR 350 per tonne by 2028 with the nitrogen import ban extended in February 2026.[29] Washington moved the other way, lifting potash sanctions in December 2025 in exchange for 123 prisoners[30] and easing measures on Belaruskali in March 2026.[29]

Access and affordability: 77

Quantitative score 81, adjusted down 4 points

Population-weighted unaffordability across the nine members for which the World Bank publishes a Cost of a Healthy Diet estimate runs at roughly 5.8 per cent, held down by Switzerland at 1.1 per cent and Belarus at 0.7 per cent, which together hold half the region's people.[33] North Macedonia is the clear outlier at 16.1 per cent, with Bosnia and Herzegovina at 12.7, Albania at 12.6 and Moldova at 12.5 per cent.[33] Undernourishment and child stunting sit at a comfortable level throughout: every named member except Albania, at 5.6 per cent for 2023 to 2025, reports undernourishment below 2.5 per cent,[34] and modelled stunting ranges from 1.1 per cent in Belarus to 8.0 per cent in Montenegro, all below the 10 per cent threshold the WHO treats as low prevalence.[35] Food price volatility is the counterweight. Eurostat's harmonised index shows year-on-year food inflation swinging from -1.5 to 8.4 per cent across Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia within 24 months, while Switzerland's food prices were flat to mildly deflationary over the same period.[36] Physical access is weakest in the landlocked Western Balkan tail, where Bosnia's split federal governance leaves no functioning national reserve,[23][24] and in the microstates, each dependent on a single neighbour's road network. A population-weighted unaffordability share of 5.8 per cent places the region near the top of the scoring range, and near-floor undernourishment and low stunting would carry it further still. Two components pull the other way: price volatility and physical access both score poorly on the evidence above. Together these put the pillar's indicators at 81. We adjust down 4 points because Kosovo carries no data point in any of the three indicators that together set 75 per cent of the pillar's weight, taking the pillar from 81 to 77. Kosovo is the poorest member by GNI per head at USD 7,760[15] and ran the region's highest food-price inflation in every month from March to December 2025, peaking at 9.3 per cent in August and still 8.6 per cent in December against 1.5 per cent in February 2024.[36] That gap mechanically overstates the population-weighted score, which is why the adjustment runs down rather than up.

Shock endurance: 65

Quantitative score 61, adjusted up 4 points

Dispersion is widest here, and the region contains a world benchmark. Switzerland holds 690,690 tonnes of compulsory stocks as at 1 January 2026: 160,000 tonnes of common wheat and 20,000 of durum at four months of cover, 16,400 tonnes of rice and 36,660 tonnes of edible oils and fats at four months, and 387,450 tonnes of energy and protein feed carriers at two to three months.[2][3] Around 100 companies, chiefly flour mills, hold the food stocks, at a cost of CHF 7 per resident per year.[5] Through the 1923 customs union the same provisions apply in Liechtenstein.[9] At USD 110,330 of GNI per head[15] Switzerland can also outbid almost anyone.

Serbia and Belarus endure through surplus and state agencies rather than cash. The Republic Directorate for Commodity Reserves bought up to 30,000 tonnes of wheat and exchanged 25,000 tonnes of maize for livestock fattening in 2024, behind roughly 550 silos with 4.2 million tonnes of capacity.[22] Belarus holds a redirectable export book of 6 million tonnes of dairy.[26]

The rest can do neither. Moldova at USD 8,050 and Kosovo at USD 7,760 of GNI per head[15] cannot outbid and hold no commodity reserves. Iceland, at USD 89,220, holds no national emergency food stockpile and dismantled its only grain mill in early 2025, a finding its own University of Iceland assessment delivered to government on 30 June 2025.[18] We adjusted up 4 for the demonstrated performance of the Swiss architecture and the Serbian and Belarusian reserve agencies. The 2022 proposal to extend Swiss cover to six months[6] remains unfunded and earns no credit.

Formal crisis purchasing power complicates the reserve-and-surplus story above. On 2024 data, the last year that covers every member, Switzerland holds 13.2 months of import cover, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and Moldova hold 5.7 to 6.5 months, and Iceland, North Macedonia and Montenegro hold 3.5 to 4.8, all above the IMF's traditional three-month adequacy floor.[37] Belarus holds only 1.95 months and Kosovo 1.88, both below that floor,[37] so the member with the strongest physical production surplus and the member with the lowest income are also the two with the thinnest financial cushion to buy through a disruption. The 2025 figures move Belarus above the floor at 3.04 months and Kosovo further below it at 1.82,[37] though no 2025 figure exists for Bosnia. Fiscal space complicates it further. On 2023 to 2024 data, Switzerland's central government debt of 22.3 per cent of GDP gives it ample room to borrow into a crisis, against 39.7 per cent for Bosnia, 34.3 per cent for Moldova, 50.0 per cent for Albania and 80.1 per cent for Iceland, the region's most indebted member;[38] comparable figures are not available for Belarus, Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro or Kosovo. No World Bank ASPIRE coverage rate is available by country, so social protection that can scale is credited only from the documented 2020 precedent, Switzerland's Kurzarbeit short-time work scheme and Serbia's flat-rate cash transfers, both of which scaled within weeks. Crisis purchasing power scores 71. Together these findings put the indicators at 61; with the unchanged +4 adjustment, the pillar reaches 65.

Trajectory

Three things would change this picture. The first is Belarusian reintegration: were EU duties on Belarusian potash reduced rather than escalated to EUR 350 per tonne by 2028,[29] the region would contain a world-scale fertiliser supplier reachable by rail. European farm lobbies have an interest in exactly that as input costs climb, and a qualified majority of member states could deliver it. That is the largest available upside to the weakest pillar.

The second is Balkan input intensity. Serbia has attached real money to its yield gap.[22] Kosovo already spends 0.84 per cent of GDP on agriculture against an EU-27 average of 0.36 per cent, but directs 71 per cent of it to direct payments rather than capital formation;[31] reallocating towards irrigation, storage and soil would raise capacity and headroom together.

The third is reserves outside Switzerland. The Swiss model costs CHF 7 per resident per year;[5] Iceland could replicate it for a rounding error and has been told to.[18] Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo could not fund four months at Swiss standards, but two to three weeks of grain and feed would change their position materially.

Working against all three is climate. Three consecutive drought-damaged maize crops in Serbia,[22] a 30 per cent shortfall in Moldova in 2026[20] and a capelin fishery that produced nothing in 2024[16] are one signal on land and at sea.

Country notes

Switzerland. Low capacity, low headroom, best-in-class endurance: 42 per cent net food and 68 per cent net animal-product self-sufficiency in 2024[1] on 0.045 hectares of arable land per person,[13] all feed soya imported,[7] 690,690 tonnes of compulsory stocks.[2]

Iceland. A large net protein exporter that cannot feed itself: 995,000 tonnes landed in 2024[16] and fish supply of 83.8 kg a head,[12] against about 1 per cent of its grain grown at home, no emergency stockpile and no grain mill since early 2025.[18]

Serbia. With Belarus the region's genuine producer: 1.5 million tonnes of exportable wheat, 2.5 million of exportable maize and 250,000 hectares of soybeans.[22] Weakest on imported fertiliser and on drought.

Bosnia and Herzegovina. The largest weak member: roughly two-thirds of food and over half of wheat imported,[23][24] agri-food imports of USD 2.1 billion in 2021,[23] 0.116 hectares of arable land per person,[13] no functioning federal reserve.

Albania. Comfortable at 114.0 g of protein per day,[10] but importing around 60 per cent of wheat and 40 per cent of poultry and pigmeat[24] on 66.1 kg of fertiliser per hectare[14] and 0.19 per cent of GDP in agricultural spending, the region's lowest share.[31]

North Macedonia. Landlocked, cereals near 70 per cent and poultry near 7 per cent self-sufficient,[24] with the region's highest agricultural spending share at 0.56 per cent of GDP.[31]

Montenegro. Weakest on capacity and imports: cereals about 5 per cent and meat about 25 per cent self-sufficient[24] on 0.0145 hectares of arable land per person,[13] with tourism roughly doubling summer demand.

Kosovo. Poorest by GNI per head at USD 7,760.[15] Agriculture employs over 23 per cent of the labour force and contributes 7.2 per cent of GDP, on EUR 86 million of support, 71 per cent of it direct payments.[31]

Belarus. Strongest on capacity and upstream: cereals of 8.7 million tonnes against import needs of 540,000 tonnes,[21] official milk self-sufficiency of 300 per cent,[25] food exports above USD 10 billion,[27] around 15 per cent of world fertiliser production.[29] Offset by sanctions[29] and concentration on Russia and China.[28]

Moldova. The most exposed member of any size on balance, though not on protein supply, where its 93.1 g per person per day[10] sits only narrowly below Switzerland's: the case rests instead on the region's highest arable land per person at 0.761 hectares[13] undercut by the lowest fertiliser intensity at 51.1 kg per hectare,[14] and USD 8,050 of GNI per head,[15] the second-lowest in the region.

Andorra. 0.009 hectares of arable land per person,[13] the lowest in the region, supplied 71 per cent from Spain and 17 per cent from France, with no stockholding regime identified.

Monaco. No agricultural production. Inside the EU customs union since 1963 via France, so its protein security is French.

San Marino. 0.059 hectares of arable land per person on 34,000 people,[13] drawing on Emilia-Romagna and Marche from inside an EU customs union that covers agricultural goods.

Liechtenstein. The best-protected microstate in the world on this measure: 0.043 hectares of arable land per person,[13] but 41,000 people behind Swiss bread-grain, feed and nitrogen stocks under the 1923 customs union.[9]

Vatican City. No agriculture, no arable land and no food statistics. Its supply is Rome's.

Country notes

Switzerland
The largest member by consumption alongside Belarus (9.09 million people, 2025) and the region's paradox. Net food self-sufficiency was 42 per cent in 2024 and animal products 68 per cent net of imported feed, on 0.045 hectares of arable land per person, and all 243,015 tonnes of feed soya plus over 90 per cent of feed grain were imported. Against that it holds 690,690 tonnes of compulsory food and feed stocks at 1 January 2026, including four months of bread wheat and two to three months of protein feed, for CHF 7 per resident per year, and it has USD 110,330 of GNI per head to outbid with. Low capacity, low headroom, best-in-class endurance.
Iceland
A very large net protein exporter that cannot feed itself. Landings of 995,000 tonnes in 2024 make it self-sufficient in animal protein several times over, yet it grows about 1 per cent of the grain it eats, imports all fertiliser and effectively all feed, holds no national emergency food stockpile, and dismantled its only grain mill in early 2025. The 2024 capelin quota was zero and pelagic landings fell 42 per cent, which is the resource-headroom warning in its clearest form. Wealth (USD 89,220 GNI per head) and sovereign renewable energy are its buffers; geography and the absence of reserves are its exposure.
Serbia
With Belarus, the region's genuine protein producer and the reason the regional score is not lower. Protein supply of 135.6 g per person per day in 2023 is the second highest in the region, wheat production of 3.3 million tonnes leaves 1.5 million exportable and maize of 7.1 million tonnes leaves 2.5 million, and 250,000 hectares of soybeans give it a domestic feed-protein base almost nobody else in Europe has. Its weaknesses are upstream and climatic: around 800,000 tonnes of imported fertiliser a year with purchases down 30 per cent on price, a third consecutive drought-hit maize crop, and roughly 60 per cent of the 2024 crop carrying aflatoxin.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
The largest of the weak members (3.14 million people) and the clearest structural importer, taking roughly two-thirds of its food from abroad and over half its wheat, with agri-food imports of USD 2.1 billion in 2021 against a widening deficit. Only sheep and goat meat and eggs exceed domestic demand. Arable land per person is 0.116 hectares, GNI per head USD 9,940, governance is split between two entities with no functioning federal reserve, and its supply lines run overwhelmingly through Serbia and Croatia. It drags the regional score more than any other member.
Albania
Middling on capacity, weak on inputs. Protein supply of 114.0 g per person per day in 2023 is comfortable and 0.245 hectares of arable land per person is respectable, but around 60 per cent of wheat and 40 per cent of poultry and pigmeat are imported, and fertiliser use at 66 kg per hectare is a third of Belarus's. Imports arrive through Durres, which is short-sea rather than chokepoint-exposed. Public spending on agriculture, at 0.19 per cent of GDP, is the lowest of the Western Balkan states, so neither yield headroom nor reserves are being funded.
North Macedonia
Landlocked, cereal self-sufficiency around 70 per cent and poultry self-sufficiency around 7 per cent, one of the most lopsided protein profiles in Europe. Protein supply of 103.1 g per person per day in 2023 is the lowest in the region apart from Moldova. Arable land per person is 0.228 hectares and fertiliser use 54 kg per hectare. Imports come mainly through Thessaloniki and Serbia, and agricultural spending of 0.56 per cent of GDP is the highest share among the Western Balkan states, which gives it more policy room than Albania even at lower income.
Montenegro
The weakest member of the region on capacity and imports, and the clearest single-point failure. Cereal self-sufficiency has run at roughly 5 per cent and meat at about 25 per cent, on 0.0145 hectares of arable land per person, the lowest anywhere in the region outside Andorra. Protein supply of 134.4 g per person per day in 2023 is high, and 59.0 kg of pigmeat per person a year is among the highest in Europe, which means near-total dependence on imported animal protein and feed. Summer tourism roughly doubles effective demand at the season of tightest supply.
Kosovo
The poorest member by GNI per head (USD 7,760, 2025) and a structural net agri-food importer. Agriculture is unusually central: 105,000 farmers manage close to half the territory, the sector employed over 23 per cent of the labour force and contributed 7.2 per cent of GDP in 2023, and the state spent EUR 86 million on it, an average 0.84 per cent of GDP over five years and more than any regional peer. Seventy-one per cent of that went to direct payments rather than to capital formation, so productivity has not followed the money. Landlocked, with import routes through North Macedonia, Albania and Serbia, the last of which is politically unreliable.
Belarus
The strongest member on capacity and by far the strongest on upstream, and the reason the regional upstream score is not in the thirties. Cereal output of 8.7 million tonnes in 2025 was above average against import needs of only 540,000 tonnes; official figures put milk at 300 per cent, meat at 140 per cent and eggs at 130 per cent of demand; food exports exceeded USD 10 billion in 2025 to 117 countries. It is the world's second-largest potash producer with around 15 per cent of global fertiliser production, and Grodno Azot covers domestic nitrogen. The offsets are political: EU sanctions, a nitrogen import ban extended in February 2026, potash duties escalating to EUR 350 per tonne by 2028, loss of Klaipeda transit, and a market book heavily concentrated on Russia and China.
Moldova
The most exposed member of any size on balance, though not on protein supply alone. Protein supply of 93.1 g per person per day in 2023 (FAOSTAT Food Balance Sheets; Our World in Data carries a figure of 77.9 that does not match FAOSTAT's own series) is the lowest in the region but only narrowly below Switzerland's 101.4 g; beef consumption is about 1 kg per person a year, and GNI per head is USD 8,050, the second-lowest in the region. It has the region's highest arable land per person at 0.761 hectares and exports grain, yet drought cut 2026 maize output roughly 30 per cent below average and total cereal production 10 per cent below, with exports 15 per cent below average (wheat production itself ran nearly 10 per cent above average, so the shortfall is maize-specific). Fertiliser use of 51 kg per hectare is the lowest in the region. Add war on its border, the Transnistrian energy problem and no reserves of note, and grain surplus does not translate into protein sovereignty.
Andorra
Effectively no food system of its own: 0.009 hectares of arable land per person, the lowest measured in the region, with agriculture reduced to small quantities of rye, wheat, barley, oats, vegetables, tobacco, sheep and cattle. Around 71 per cent of imports come from Spain and 17 per cent from France, so its protein security is a function of Spanish supply and of two mountain road corridors. It sits outside both the EU customs union for most goods and any stockholding regime we could identify.
Monaco
No agricultural production and no arable land recorded. Monaco has been inside the EU customs union since 1963 through its customs agreements with France, so its food supply is administratively and physically an extension of the French system, and it benefits from EU-level supply arrangements without holding reserves of its own. Total dependence on a single wealthy neighbour is the least dangerous form of total dependence, which is why it scores above the Balkan tail on endurance despite scoring at the floor on capacity.
San Marino
0.059 hectares of arable land per person, higher than Switzerland's but on a base of 34,000 people, so absolute production is negligible. Its customs union with the EU includes agricultural products, which the EEA agreements notably do not, so San Marino sits inside the EU's agricultural trade perimeter and draws its supply from surrounding Emilia-Romagna and Marche. Its exposure is to Italian supply, and it holds no independent reserve.
Liechtenstein
The best-protected microstate in the world on this measure. Through the 1923 customs and monetary union with Switzerland, the Swiss compulsory stock provisions apply in Liechtenstein, with the Amt fuer Zivilschutz und Landesversorgung as the competent authority, and the listed goods include cereals, sugar, rice, edible oils and fats, coffee and fertilisers. Domestic capacity is minimal at 0.043 hectares of arable land per person, but 41,000 people sit behind four months of Swiss bread-grain cover and the Swiss feed and nitrogen stockpiles.
Vatican City
No agriculture, no arable land, no food statistics of any kind, and a resident population of roughly a thousand. Its entire food supply arrives from Italy, and its protein security is identical to Rome's. We score it at the floor on capacity, headroom and imports and above the floor on endurance, since a population of that size can be provisioned by any functioning neighbour and its consumption weight in the regional aggregate is immaterial.

Sources

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  3. Range of compulsory stocks · Swiss Federal Office for National Economic Supply (FONES) (2026)
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  9. Agricultural goods subject to compulsory stockpiling (Switzerland and Liechtenstein) · WTO Import Licensing Portal (2026)
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  27. Belarus aims to increase food exports in 2026 · REFORM.news (2026)
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  29. Belarus could boost potash exports after US move, but EU barriers, logistical hurdles remain (20 March 2026) · RFE/RL (via GlobalSecurity.org) (2026)
  30. Belarus frees prominent political prisoners as US lifts sanctions on country's potash exports (13 December 2025) · Associated Press (via PBS NewsHour) (2025)
  31. Paradigm shift needed in Kosovo's agricultural subsidy system (Kosovo Newsletter 21) · German Economic Team (2025 (data 2023))
  32. Grodno Azot company profile · Fertilizer Daily (2026)
  33. Food Prices for Nutrition Datahub: Cost of a Healthy Diet, percent of population who cannot afford it (CoHD_headcount) · World Bank (2026 (data 2024))
  34. Suite of Food Security Indicators: prevalence of undernourishment (SDG 2.1.1) · FAOSTAT (FAO), underlying FAO SOFI series (2026 (data 2023-2025, 3-year average))
  35. Suite of Food Security Indicators: percentage of children under 5 stunted (modelled estimates) · FAOSTAT (FAO), underlying UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Joint Malnutrition Estimates (2026 (data 2024))
  36. Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices, monthly data (annual rate of change), COICOP division CP01 food and non-alcoholic beverages · Eurostat (2026 (data January 2024-December 2025))
  37. World Development Indicators: total reserves in months of imports (FI.RES.TOTL.MO) · World Bank (2026 (data 2024))
  38. World Development Indicators: central government debt, total (% of GDP) (GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS) · World Bank (2026 (data 2023-2024))
  39. World Development Indicators: inflation, consumer prices (annual %) (FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG) · World Bank (2025 (data 2022-2023))
  40. Investment: Credit to Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (Agriculture Orientation Index, data) · FAOSTAT (FAO) (2026 (data 2024))
  41. Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use, area equipped for irrigation and arable land (data) · FAOSTAT (FAO) (2026 (data 2000-2024))
  42. Serbia agri and sustainability brief: diet shifts, sowing trends, nature protection, and new subsidy rules (9 February 2026) · Netherlands Agricultural Network (LAN) (2026)
  43. Republic of Moldova: Agriculture Competitiveness Project and AGGRI Implementation Support Mission Aide Memoire (24 February-14 March 2025) · World Bank (2025)

What we could not measure

Kosovo, whose food-price inflation is accelerating, has no World Bank cost-of-diet reading, no FAO undernourishment series and no child-stunting estimate, the most material of several small members missing all three. Outside Switzerland, no country in the region discloses a strategic reserve stock level, and no recent survey feeds a stunting estimate for Switzerland or Iceland. Belarus, Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina have no food-specific price series, so their inflation shocks are read only through headline consumer prices.

Published August 2026 ·How scores are produced