We may not always
think about it, but the origin of trade is found in ecology and not in economy.
The merchant was an ecological plumber moving supplies from an area of surplus
to one of shortage, greasing the cogs of ecology as well as human society.
Trade made it possible for human beings to establish themselves even where some
basic resource was absent. One tribe had access to a resource that the other
was missing. In some places flint or obsidian was abundant, and in other places
hunters had no access to those stones for making spears and arrows. In other
areas there was no salt, which was important for preserving meat and curing
skins. In some rare cases this situation might have led to war, but more often
it led to peaceful exchange.
The role of trade in
ecological adaptation has, in some cases, meant that communities have been able
to specialize in forms of production that are very well adapted to their
ecological context. Through trade with the plains, the peasants of the Alps could shift entirely to pasturing livestock thus
avoiding the need to plow fragile mountain slopes while their Mediterranean
colleagues occupied themselves with viticulture and olives. In this way, trade
in agricultural produce, even staple food such as grain, promoted
sustainability, long before the term was coined.[i]
But how is it today? I
will explore the status and implications of global food trade in (I believe) four
posts. This first one gives an overview of
the actual status of global trade in
food. The second on its implications on diets, environment, water, land use,
carbon emissions. Thirdly, I will discuss it from the perspective of the
agriculture producer in exporting and importing countries, and finally, I will discuss
the drivers, which changes are either caused by internal mechanisms or external
conditions and what developments would be desirable.
Global food production
increased with over 50% between 1986 and 2009. Meanwhile the trade in food for
direct human consumption has increased from 15% of total production in 1986 to
23% in 2009, thus about one fourth of food production is traded. Half of the
net exports 2010 were originating from just five countries, USA (17%), Brazil
(9.9%), Argentina (8.5%), Indonesia (5.9%) and France (5.9%).[ii]
At the global level, land for export production grew rapidly by about 100 million
hectares between 1986 and 2009, while land supplying crops for direct domestic
use remained virtually unchanged.[iii]
Production of commercial agricultural commodities for domestic and foreign
markets is increasingly driving land clearing in tropical regions. Henders et
al (2015) show that in the period 2000–2011, the production of beef, soybeans,
palm oil, and wood products in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Indonesia,
Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea was responsible for 40% of total tropical
deforestation.[iv]
At the same time large tracts of land is left idle or used
for development in the advanced economies.[v]
Rich
countries are increasingly using land in other regions for their food
production. The UK
is currently importing over 50% of its food and feed, and 70% of the associated
cropland is located abroad. Between 1986 and 2009 the global cropland footprint
associated with the UK
food and feed supply increased by 2022 kha (+23%).[vi]
Of course, you have to afford food in order to buy it in international markets;
the average per capita GDP in
countries that achieve sufficient food supply by imports was approximately
tenfold compared to countries with insufficient food supply and production.[vii]
Mostly, international trade flow from
high-yield to low-yield regions: For that reason, one can argue that trade
lowered global cropland demand by almost 90 million hectares according to a
study by Thomas Kastner, Karl-Heinz Erb and Helmut Haberl (2014). However, area-efficiency gains through trade
do not imply that international trade reduces total global land demand. For
instance, if trade reduces price levels, consumption of agricultural products
will increase, especially for products with elastic demand.[viii]
Clearly this is what has happened with the rapid increase of trade in poultry
meat, palm oil and soybean meal.
Trade
fills an important role for moving produce from areas with excess to areas with
deficit. In 1965 insufficient domestic production normally meant insufficient
food supply, but in recent years the deficit has been increasingly compensated
by rising food imports.[ix]
There are, however, many
meachnisms in trade which leads countries not to produce food even if they
could do so. Europe has let almost 100 million hectares of farm land revert to
forest or lying idle, while European farmers buy protein rich feedstuffs from developing
countries and European food industries buy palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia. Europe
could produce those within its own territory.[x]
Many assume that exports goes from countries with
relatively more efficient production than importing nations, including land
use, water use, and nutrient use. However, Macdonald et al (2015) suggest that
higher resource endowments in some major exporting countries may facilitate
land- or water-intensive exports despite lower efficiency. Research on embodied
water trade demonstrates many examples in which trade occurs despite relative
disadvantages.[xi]
In many countries agricultural
production and trade patterns are driven by other factors than availability or
water and land resources. In some cases scarcity of resources can even be intensified by the
production of agricultural products for export. There are some countries which
rely on food imports due to land and water constraints on domestic food
production, but many countries import a lot without having particular resource
constraints. For example, in Mexico,
per capita freshwater and land resources are still quite abundant despite the
rapid population growth. Yet, in recent years it has become a high net importer
of food, with over 1800 kcal/capita/day imported in 2005. [xii] Partly this is because Mexico imports high calorie
commodities such as maize, soybeans and wheat and export high-value vegetables.
Despite this, Mexico
is a net importer also calculated in values; see graph.
Three quarters of the global food trade is with
crops which are grown both in the exporting and importing countries, i.e. only
a quarter of the trade is with crops which could not be grown in the importing
country, e.g. coffee imports to Europe and United States.[xiii]
Sometimes very similar products are exchanged between countries, e.g. bottled
lager beer can be both imported and exported from the same country. Sometimes
there are some differences in quality between the imported and the exported
goods. For example, the United States
imports land-intensive pasture-grazed beef from Australia but simultaneously
exports predominantly grain-fed beef to other countries.[xiv]
Sweden
both import and export wheat, normally it imports lower quality and imports
higher quality. In many cases it is just the price which determines if a
product will be traded or not.
[i] This introduction is extracted from my book
Global Eating Disorder, which discuss food trade extensively. The data in this
post are however even more recent and was nbot part of the research for the
book.
[ii] D’Odorico, P., J. A. Carr, F.
Laio, L. Ridolfi, and S. Vandoni (2014), Feeding humanity through global food
trade, Earth’s Future, 2, 458–469, doi:10.1002/2014EF000250.
[iii] Thomas Kastner, Karl-Heinz Erb nd Helmut Haberl 2014 Rapid growth in
agricultural trade: effects on global area efficiency and the role of
management, Environ. Res. Lett. 9 (2014) 034015 (10pp)
[iv] Sabine Henders et al 2015, Trading forests: land-use change and carbon
emissions embodied in production and exports of forest-risk commodities, Environ.
Res. Lett. 10 (2015)
[v]
Rundgren, G 2014, Global Eating Disorder.
[vi] de Ruiter H, Macdiarmid JI, Matthews RB, Kastner T, Smith P. 2016
Global cropland and greenhouse gas impacts of UK food supply are increasingly
located overseas. J. R. Soc.
Interface 13: 20151001. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2015.1001
[vii]
Porkka M, Kummu M, Siebert S, Varis O (2013) From Food Insufficiency towards
Trade Dependency: A Historical Analysis of Global Food Availability. PLoS ONE
8(12): e82714. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082714
[viii] Thomas Kastner, Karl-Heinz Erb nd Helmut Haberl 2014 Rapid growth in
agricultural trade: effects on global area efficiency and the role of
management, Environ. Res. Lett. 9 (2014) 034015 (10pp)
[ix]
Porkka M, Kummu M, Siebert S, Varis O (2013) From Food Insufficiency towards
Trade Dependency: A Historical Analysis of Global Food Availability. PLoS ONE
8(12): e82714. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082714
[x]
Rundgren, G 2014, Global Eating Disorder.
[xi]
Graham K. Macdonald et al 2015, Rethinking Agricultural Trade Relationships in
an Era of Globalization http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org
[xii]
Porkka M, Kummu M, Siebert S, Varis O (2013) From Food Insufficiency towards
Trade Dependency: A Historical Analysis of Global Food Availability. PLoS ONE
8(12): e82714. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082714
[xiii]
Thomas Kastner, Karl-Heinz Erb nd Helmut Haberl 2014 Rapid growth in
agricultural trade: effects on global area efficiency and the role of
management, Environ. Res. Lett. 9 (2014) 034015 (10pp)
[xiv] Graham
K. Macdonald et al 2015, Rethinking Agricultural Trade Relationships in an Era
of Globalization http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org
