China increasingly relies on agricultural imports, driven by its rising population and income, as well as dietary shifts. International trade offers an opportunity to relieve pressures on resource depletion and pollution, such as nitrogen (N) pollution, while it poses multiple socioeconomic challenges, such as food availability. To quantify such trade-offs considering the roles of different crop types, we developed a unique crop-specific N budget database and assessed the impacts of the crop trade on multiple sustainability concerns including N pollution caused by crop production, crop land area, independence of food supply, and trade expenditures. We quantified the ‘virtual’ N inputs and harvested areas, which are the amount of N inputs and land resources used in exporting countries for China’s crop import. In addition, we proposed the concepts of ‘alternative’ N inputs and harvested area to quantify the resources needed if imported crops were produced in China. By comparing results from ‘alternative’ and ‘virtual’ concepts, we assessed the role of trade in Chinese crops over the past 30 years (i.e. 1986–2015) in alleviating N pollution and saving cropland in China and the world. Crop imports accounted for 31% of Chinese crop N consumption in 2015, and these crop imports eased the need for an additional cropland area of 62 million ha. It also avoided an N surplus by 56 and 36 Tg (Tg = 109kg) for China and the world respectively but led to $621 billion crop trade expenditures over the 30 year period. The N pollution damage avoided by crop imports in economic terms was priced at $22 ± 16 billion in 2015, which is lower than the crop trade expenditures but may be surpassed in the future with the development of the Chinese economy. Optimizing a crop trade portfolio can shift domestic production from N-intensive crop production (e.g. maize, fruits, and vegetables) to N-efficient crop production (e.g. soybeans), and consequently mitigate an N surplus by up to 12%. Improving N use efficiency for individual crops can further increase the mitigation potential of N surplus to 30%–50%, but requires technology advancement and policy incentives.
Agricultural Trade and Environmental Sustainability
Global agriculture consumes substantial resources and produces significant pollution. By shifting its production to new locations, and inducing changes in technology and input use, trade has a substantial impact on environmental sustainability of the world's food systems, but due to suboptimal environmental policy, the exact nature of these impacts is in dispute. We review the literature on agricultural trade and environmental sustainability, highlighting the different approaches taken in ecology versus economics. While useful in identifying environmental costs, much of the ecological literature does not compare these costs to a trade-free counterfactual and can therefore be misleading. Further, by moving production to places with more resources and increasing production efficiency, trade can reduce the environmental impact of food production. On the other hand, trade can also limit the effectiveness of domestic environmental policy because production can be shifted to countries with less stringent regulations. However, recently, consumers are leveraging trade policy to induce exporters to improve environmental sustainability. While such policies are gaining traction in wealthy countries, evidence suggests that such measures will not reach their potential without buy-in from decision makers in the countries where the environmental damages are occurring. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Volume 13 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10296613
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Annual Review of Resource Economics
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1941-1340
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-101420-090453
