Feeding humanity through global food trade

By Paolo D'Odorico, J. Carr, Francesco Laio, Luca Ridolfi, S. Vandoni. 2014

411 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The recent intensification of international trade has led to a globalization of food commodities and to an increased disconnection between human populations and the land and water resources that support them through crop and livestock production. Several countries are not self‐sufficient and depend on imports from other regions. Despite the recognized importance of the role of trade in global and regional food security, the societal reliance on domestic production and international trade remains poorly quantified. Here we investigate the global patterns of food trade and evaluate the dependency of food security on imports. We investigate the relationship existing between the trade of food calories and the virtual transfer of water used for their production. We show how the amount of food calories traded in the international market has more than doubled between 1986 and 2009, while the number of links in the trade network has increased by more than 50%. Likewise, global food production has increased by more than 50% in the same period, providing an amount of food that is overall sufficient to support the global population at a rate of 2700–3000 kcal per person per day. About 23% of the food produced for human consumption is traded internationally. The water use efficiency of food trade (i.e., food calories produced per unit volume of water used) has declined in the last few decades. The water use efficiency of food production overall increases with the countries' affluence; this trend is likely due to the use of more advanced technology.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Engineering, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7264200033dc4e1fbd8a5558d8f957683516b4b8

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Citations in the corpus

Human appropriation of land for food: The role of diet (2016, background): “…regarding future diets (Bajželj et al., 2014; Haberl et al., 2011; Popp et al., 2010; Stehfest 3 et al., 2009), and the ability of the agricultural system to supply the global population with a diet 4 containing adequate calories has also been considered (Cassidy et al., 2013; Davis et al., 2014).”
Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the Links between Normative Valuations and Agency in Food Transition (2017, background): “As a commodity, international food trade that only accounts for 23% of global food production [47] is dominated by a few transnational companies [45].”
The science of Soil Security and Food Security (2020, background): “Similarly, the study y DeFries and Rosenzweig (2010) discussed the benefits of sustainable griculture, while also suggesting ways to encourage adoption of newer ractices such as land use assessment, understanding of demographics nd socioeconomic factors.”
The incursions of extractivism: moving from dispersed places to global capitalism (2019, neutral): “Local initiatives have a considerable reach, as shown by D ’ Odorico et al. (2014): 77% of the food produced in the world is comercialized (and consumed) at national level, mainly through local markets.”
Interplay of trade and food system resilience: Gains on supply diversity over time at the cost of trade independency (2020, background): “Trade of agricultural and fishery products has increased dramatically over the past decades (D'Odorico et al., 2014; WITS, 2017; FAO, 2018b); for example, the value of annual food exports has increased from 13 to 620 billion USD since 1988 (WITS, 2017), and today about one quarter of the food produc”
Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere (2015, background): “To succeed in these efforts, it is essential to avoid the mere displacement of societal demands from one region to another by monitoring and improved governance of agricultural supply chains and environmental programs (Fairhead et al. 2012, D’Odorico et al. 2014, Nepstad et al. 2014, Scales 2014).”