Search for: All records

Abstract Global agricultural trade, production, and harvested area have steadily increased between 1961 and 2021. In this paper, we construct, decompose, and compare various measures of global physical crop yield that rely on countries’ crop area, production, and trade weights that vary over time. We document how the composition of exports and imports irrespective of the particular drivers of globalization is skewed towards higher crop yields compared to the changing international patterns of countries’ production as evidenced by the distribution of harvested area and production. We also document how the physical yield of exporting countries has consistently surpassed that of importing countries, indicating as well how a globalized world in which countries can trade and alter the pattern of crop production offers a way to ensure that worldwide higher-yield crops are being consumed. As such, the increasingly globalized agricultural sector with its many drivers of trade substitutes for and/or complements efforts to close the yield gap by upgrading countries crop production methods. For the exercise, we use national-scale data for 60 years from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. 

Abstract This analysis quantifies the network dynamics, geographic concentration, and disparities in perishable food supply networks for temperature-controlled food shipments in the United States. The United States forms the core of global food systems and produces more high-quality data for network analysis than most other countries. We use the 2017 US Census Commodity Flow Survey and other publicly available data to derive empirical results from the Food Flow Model for perishable meats and perishable prepared foods. We identify the top ten counties for perishable food distribution and find that the Los Angeles and Chicago regions support the greatest volumes of perishable food movements. States that largely exist outside national perishable food networks are Arizona, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia. Our analysis of US data highlights the importance of certain counties, states, and regions in perishable food networks and illustrates how data and logistics optimization models shape the geography of food. Findings suggest areas where interventions could improve systems’ functions by reducing reliance on core areas, increasing access to markets for farmers, and improving access to food for under-served communities, especially those in rural regions. 

We provide a dataset of irrigation water withdrawals by crop, county, year, and water source within the United States. We employ a framework we previously developed to establish a companion dataset to our original estimates. The main difference is that we now use the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) variable ‘irrigation — total’ to partition PCR-GLOBWB 2 hydrology model estimates, instead of ‘irrigation — crop’ as used in previous estimates. Our findings for Surface Water Withdrawals (SWW), total Groundwater Withdrawals (GWW), and nonrenewable Groundwater Depletion (GWD) are similar to those of prior estimates but now have better spatial coverage, since several states are missing from the USGS ‘irrigation — crop’ variable that was originally used. Irrigation water use increases in this study, since more states are included and ‘irrigation — total’ includes more categories of irrigation than ‘irrigation — crop’. Notably, irrigation in the Mississippi Embayment Aquifer is now captured for rice and soy. We provide nearly 2.5 million data points with this paper (3,142 counties; 13 years; 3 water sources; and 20 crops). 

Abstract Reducing wasted food has been identified as a key strategy to meet food security goals and attain human nutritional needs and food preferences in an equitable, sustainable, and resilient manner. Yet, mathematically modeling how reducing wasted food contributes to sustainability, equity, and resilience objectives, and the possible interactions and tradeoffs among these metrics, is limited by challenges to quantifying these characteristics. Using the process of convergent science, we develop a prototype wasted food model to evaluate how a set of common equity, sustainability, and resilience measures interact. We consider prevention (consumer education) and treatment (anaerobic digestion and composting) options for wasted food diversion from landfills. The model applies a convex nonlinear optimization to determine the allocation of wasted food to different management alternatives, optimizing for economic (net cost), sustainability (emissions reductions or energy savings), or equity (distribution of per-capita cost or emissions reduction impacts). The model developed in this research is available online as open-source code for others to replicate and build upon for future studies and analysis. Our findings illustrate that optimal wasted food management alternatives may vary when targeting different metrics and that strategies promoting cost-effectiveness may be in tension with sustainability or equity goals and vice versa. The implications of this study could be used by policy makers to evaluate how wasted food reduction measures will impact sustainability, equity, and resilience goals. 

This dataset provides estimates of total Irrigation Water Use (IWU) by crop, county, water source, and year for the Continental United States. Total irrigation from Surface Water Withdrawals (SWW), total Groundwater Withdrawals (GWW), and nonrenewable Groundwater Depletion (GWD) is provided for 20 crops and crop groups from 2008 to 2020 at the county spatial resolution. In total, there are nearly 2.5 million data points in this dataset (3,142 counties; 13 years; 3 water sources; and 20 crops). This dataset supports the paper by Ruess et al (2024) "Total irrigation by crop in the Continental United States from 2008 to 2020", Scientific Data, doi: 10.1038/s41597-024-03244-w When using, please cite as: Ruess, P.J., Konar, M., Wanders, N., and Bierkens, M.F.P. (2024) Total irrigation by crop in the Continental United States from 2008 to 2020, Scientific Data, doi: 10.1038/s41597-024-03244-w 

Abstract Civil infrastructure underpins urban receipts of food, energy, and water (FEW) produced in distant watersheds. In this study, we map flows of FEW goods from watersheds of the contiguous United States to major population centers and highlight the critical infrastructure that supports FEW flows. To do this, we draw upon detailed records of agriculture, electricity, and public water supply production and couple them with commodity flow and infrastructure information. We also compare the flows of virtual water embedded in food and energy commodity flows with physical water flows in inter‐basin water transfer projects around the country. We found that the virtual blue water transfers through crops and electricity to major US cities was 53 billion and 8 billion m³in 2017, respectively, while physical interbasin water transfers for crops, electricity, and public supply water averaged 20.8 billion m³. Highways are the primary infrastructure used to import virtual water associated with food and fuel into cities, although waterways and railways are most utilized for long‐distance transport. All of the 204 watersheds in the contiguous US support the food, energy, and/or water supplies of major US cities, with dependencies stretching far beyond each city's borders. Still, most cities source the majority of their FEW and embedded water resources from nearby watersheds. Infrastructure such as water supply dams and inland ports serve as important buffers for both local and supply‐chain sourced water stress. These findings can inform efforts to reduce water resources and infrastructure risks in domestic supply chains. 

Global grain trade plays a key role in food security. Many nations rely on imported grain to meet their dietary requirements. Grain imports may be at risk due to weather shocks, economic crises, or international conflicts. Countries aim to balance import risk with the expected return of their grain supplies. This research brings these dual objectives together in an innovative modern portfolio theory framework. Modern portfolio theory provides a set of concepts to formulate the trade-off between risk and expected return in national grain imports. Using Markowitz mean-variance optimization model, we identify opportunities to reduce risk in existing national grain import accounts, without increasing costs under realistic supply mass constraints of trade partners. Several major grain importers may be able to reduce risk in their grain imports without increasing cost, such as wheat imports in Egypt, maize imports in Vietnam, and rice imports in Saudi Arabia. However, some countries would indeed have to pay more to achieve more stable grain supplies, such as wheat imports in Turkey. This study provides a framework to quantify the different costs, benefits, and levels of risk in grain trade that can inform future research and decision-making.