Spatial decoupling of agricultural production and consumption: quantifying dependences of countries on food imports due to domestic land and water constraints

By Marianela Fader, Dieter Gerten, M. Krause, Wolfgang Lucht, W. Cramer. 2013

327 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In our globalizing world, the geographical locations of food production and consumption are becoming increasingly disconnected, which increases reliance on external resources and their trade. We quantified to what extent water and land constraints limit countries’ capacities, at present and by 2050, to produce on their own territory the crop products that they currently import from other countries. Scenarios of increased crop productivity and water use, cropland expansion (excluding areas prioritized for other uses) and population change are accounted for. We found that currently 16% of the world population use the opportunities of international trade to cover their demand for agricultural products. Population change may strongly increase the number of people depending on ex situ land and water resources up to about 5.2 billion (51% of world population) in the SRES A2r scenario. International trade will thus have to intensify if population growth is not accompanied by dietary change towards less resource-intensive products, by cropland expansion, or by productivity improvements, mainly in Africa and the Middle East. Up to 1.3 billion people may be at risk of food insecurity in 2050 in present low-income economies (mainly in Africa), if their economic development does not allow them to afford productivity increases, cropland expansion and/or imports from other countries.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Engineering, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a29d7f460b550a04ceea3654e718a4ef813540c5

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Citations in the corpus

Feeding humanity through global food trade (2014, background): “Several countries around the world are not in conditions of food self-sufficiency but depend on imports from other regions [Fader et al., 2013; Suweis et al., 2013].”
The Global Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus (2018, background): “A number of recent studies have quantified the global carrying capacity for human population to stress the finite magnitude of the agricultural resources available locally and globally (e.g., Davis et al., 2016; Fader et al., 2013; Porkka et al., 2017), including water resources (Falkenmark & Rockst”
Sustainability of global water use: past reconstruction and future projections (2014, background): “…measures have been proposed, involving innovations in water and food technology, water management and governance, dietary change, and economic incentives (e.g., environmental tax) (Gleick et al 2010, MacDonald 2010, Vörösmarty et al 2010, Fader et al 2010, 2013, Foley et al 2011, Kummu et al 2012).”
Global food self-sufficiency in the 21st century under sustainable intensification of agriculture (2020, background): “Most studies on global food security do not make projections past the year 2050 (e.g. Godfray et al 2010, Fader et al 2013), just as climate change and increasing demand for food are expected to intensify.”
Food appropriation through large scale land acquisitions (2014, background): “…on uncertain sources of food: in response to the escalating food prices (Godfray et al 2010, Fader et al 2013, FAO/OECD 2011) major exporting countries such as Russia, Indonesia, and Argentina restricted their exports, thereby causing food shortage in import dependent regions (Fader et al 2013).”
Rethinking Agricultural Trade Relationships in an Era of Globalization (2015, background): “The environmental burden of food production may therefore be shifted to export-producing regions, whereas some importing nations become increasingly reliant on foreign resources for their food security (Erb et al. 2009, Fader et al. 2013).”
Food self-sufficiency: Making sense of it, and when it makes sense (2017, unknown): “Other net-food importing countries, such as Colombia and Venezuela in South America, also have the capacity to be self-sufficient in food (Fader et al., 2013), yet rely on global markets for a significant proportion of their food consumption (UNCTAD, 2014).”
Human appropriation of land for food: The role of diet (2016, background): “…26 because of the global scale of the analysis (considering global adoption of alternative diets), and also 27 because of the levels of international trade in agricultural commodities and the associated globalised 28 markets (D’Odorico et al., 2014; Fader et al., 2013; Meyfroidt et al., 2013).”
Food security and sustainable resource management (2015, background): “Transfers of food between different regions effectively move crop inputs, such as water and land, from areas with excess resources to areas with shortages [Fader et al., 2013].”