Risk of Global External Cereals Supply under the Background of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Based on the Perspective of Trade Network

Unpacking the Global Rice Trade Network: Centrality, Structural Holes, and the Nexus of Food Insecurity

The challenging international landscape and exacerbated extreme weather conditions contribute to the instability of global grain trade, complicating its impact on food security. This complexity is particularly pronounced for varieties like rice, which are heavily affected by policy-driven trade restrictions. There is insufficient research on how a country's rice trade characteristics affect food security. A network analysis approach is adopted to intricately dissect the structural characteristics of rice trade. To explore causality with food insecurity, this paper chooses structural holes and centrality as representatives of trade network characteristics and regresses them on the food insecurity indicator. With cross-national data spanning over 30 years, the network analysis provides a clear portrayal of the dynamic changes in international rice trade. The overall resilience of the trade network has increased, but specific countries' vulnerability has also risen. Unlike the changing trends in features observed in grain and food trade networks, there is a notable intensification in the imbalance of power distribution in the rice trade network compared to over 30 years ago. The panel data regression results show that constraint, indicating the scarcity of structural holes or connections to stronger trading partners, significantly and positively influences a country's level of food insecurity. Based on these findings, the policy proposal for importing countries emphasizes creating strategic trade connections. By choosing appropriate trade partners that reduce constraint, food security can be enhanced, even without improvements in other conditions.

Preserving global land and water resources through the replacement of livestock feed crops with agricultural by-products

While animal-source foods contribute to 16% of the global food supply and are an important protein source in human diets, their production uses a disproportionately large fraction of agricultural land and water resources. Therefore, a global comprehensive understanding of the extent to which livestock production competes directly or indirectly with food crops is needed. Here we use an agro-hydrological model combined with crop-specific yield data to investigate to what extent the replacement of some substitutable feed crops with available agricultural by-products would spare agricultural land and water resources that could be reallocated to other uses, including food crop production. We show that replacing 11-16% of energy-rich feed crops (that is, cereals and cassava) with agricultural by-products would allow for the saving of approximately 15.4-27.8 Mha of land, and 3-19.6 km3 and 74.2-137.8 km3 of blue and green water, respectively, for the growth of other food crops, thus providing a suitable strategy to reduce unsustainable use of natural resources both locally or through virtual land and water trade.

Understanding Global Rice Trade Flows: Network Evolution and Implications

Rice holds a significant position as one of the world's most important food crops, and international trade plays a crucial role in regulating rice supply and demand. Analyzing the structural evolution of the global rice trade from a network perspective is paramount for understanding the global rice-trade supply chain and ensuring global food security. This study utilizes international rice-trade data from 2000 to 2021 and employs various network analysis methods to depict the spatial and temporal patterns of the global rice trade, examines the network topologies of the global rice trade, and reveals the impacts of its evolution on food security. The research findings are as follows: (1) Global rice-trade scale has increased over time, indicating a relatively stable development with the gradual formation of complex rice-trade networks. Since 2000, the global rice-trade networks have shown increasing density characterized by Asia as the primary export source and Africa as an important import market. (2) Network analysis indicators demonstrate a growing trend in the size and density of the global rice-trade networks, along with increasingly optimized network structures and improved network connectivity efficiency. Core positions in the networks are occupied by Thailand, Vietnam, India, China, Pakistan, and the United States, while import partners in European and American countries, such as Germany, France, UK, Canada, The Netherlands, and Belgium, show greater diversification. Asia, Europe, and North America form agglomeration regions for rice-exporting countries. Additionally, importing and exporting countries in the global rice-trade networks exhibit certain geographical concentrations. (3) The network backbones of the global rice trade are continuously evolving and being refined, characterized by dominant large rice-exporting countries in Asia and prominent developed countries in Europe and North America. The backbone structures revolve around India as the core, Thailand and Pakistan as the second cores, and critical nodes represented by Italy, the United States, China, and Vietnam. Regional backbone networks have also formed in Asia and Europe. Based on these findings, this paper clarifies the complex network characteristics of the global rice trade and offers insights to promote international rice-trade cooperation and safeguard global food security.

Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Food Supply-Demand Balance in Uzbekistan under Different Scenarios

The food supply-demand balance is a perpetual concern for many countries, especially developing countries, such as Uzbekistan. Using the land resource carrying capacity model, here, food supply and demand for the cereals and calories in Uzbekistan during 1995-2020 were revealed. Despite increased demand for cereals and calories, unstable crop production has led to volatile growth patterns. The carrying capacity of cropland resources under Uzbekistan's consumption standard shifted from overload to surplus and then to balance. Moreover, the carrying capacity of cropland resources under the healthy diet standard moved from balance to surplus in the past 25-years. Additionally, the calorific equivalent land resource carrying capacity under Uzbekistan's consumption standard fluctuated, with the carrying state shifting from balance to surplus, and the healthy diet standard still in overload. These findings can help guide sustainable production and consumption strategies in Uzbekistan and other countries by analyzing the consumption structure and changes in supply and demand relationships.

External supply risk of agricultural products trade along the Belt and Road under the background of COVID-19

Agricultural product trade along the Belt and Road (B&R) is an important part of the international food security system, the vulnerabilities of which have been highlighted by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the complex network analysis, this study analyzes the characteristics of agricultural products trade network along the B&R. It also combines the effects of COVID-19 with the import trade volume of agricultural products in countries along the B&R to build a risk supply model of agricultural products. The results show that: (1) In 2021, the spatial correlation structure of agricultural products trade along the B&R became increasingly sparse, and the network connectivity and density also decreased. (2) The network showed obvious scale-free distribution characteristics and obvious heterogeneity. Five communities emerged under the influence of the core node countries, but the formation of community in 2021 had obvious geopolitical characteristics. (3) Under the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic, the number of countries with medium-risk and high-risk level along the route facing external dependence risk (R_EDI), import concentration risk (R_HHI) and COVID-19 epidemic risk (R_RICI) increased in 2021, and the number of countries with extremely low-risk level decreased. (4) The dominant risk type of external supply of agricultural products along the route changed from compound risk type in 2019 to epidemic risk in 2021. Hence, the results can be expected to prevent external risk impact from reducing excessive concentration of agricultural products trade and excessive dependence on the external market.

Impact of the Russian–Ukrainian Conflict on Global Food Crops

The Russian–Ukrainian conflict has been proven to cause significant losses of life and goods on both sides. This may have potentially impacted the agricultural sector. This study examines the impact of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on the global food situation. We performed a descriptive analysis and literature review to answer this objective. Russia and Ukraine play essential roles in world food production and trade. However, the war has disrupted food production in Ukraine. Estimated Ukrainian wheat, soybean, and maize production in 2022–2023 fell precipitously. On the other hand, Russian production of these three food products shows positive growth during the same period. Furthermore, the global supply chain and food trade are hampered, causing an increase in the world’s food prices. From March to May 2022, the average global price of wheat, soybeans, and maize increased dramatically compared to during and before the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, this poses a danger to global food security, particularly for low-income countries that depend heavily on food imports from both countries. Therefore, all countries must be prepared for the possibility that the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be achieved.

Impact of Extreme Weather Disasters on China’s Barley Industry under the Background of Trade Friction—Based on the Partial Equilibrium Model

The world has entered a compound risk era with multiple crises, and the adverse impact of trade friction and extreme weather disasters on China’s barley import has become increasingly prominent. In this context, this study uses superimposed epoch analysis and partial equilibrium model to evaluate the impact of extreme weather disasters in China’s major barley-exporting countries on China’s barley industry in the course of China–Australia trade friction. The results show that: (1) extreme weather disaster caused barley production in France and Canada to decrease by 7.95% and 18.36% respectively; (2) when the two external shocks occur at the same time, China’s barley import volume tends to decline compared with the basic scenario, the import price rises sharply, there are certain trade-diverting effects in barley import, and China’s imports from countries not affected by extreme weather disasters will increase to a certain extent; (3) China’s barley production remains at a low rate of growth and is vulnerable to external shocks, facing certain import risks. This study provides important policy implications for preventing import risks and ensuring the sufficient supply of domestic barley.

Effects of Corruption Control on the Number of Undernourished People in Developing Countries

Developing countries will be home to 85% of the world’s population by 2030. Hence, it is important to ensure food security for them. This effort is not easy, as the number of undernourished people (NUP) in the world has increased. We investigated the impact of food and non-production factors on the NUP in developing countries. This study employed secondary data from 57 developing countries between 2002 and 2018. These countries come from three regions, namely Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. One-step and two-step generalized method of moments (sys-GMM) models were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that the food production index, cereal import dependency ratio, economic globalization index, and human capital index had different effects on the NUP in each region. The excellent news is that corruption control can help developing countries minimize their NUP. Based on the findings, we propose efforts to improve physical and economical food access and control corruption, and developing country governments and the international community must demonstrate a strong commitment to reducing the prevalence of undernourishment.

Cold Chain Food and COVID-19 Transmission Risk: From the Perspective of Consumption and Trade

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), political and academic circles have focused significant attention on stopping the chain of COVID-19 transmission. In particular outbreaks related to cold chain food (CCF) have been reported, and there remains a possibility that CCF can be a carrier. Based on CCF consumption and trade matrix data, here, the "source" of COVID-19 transmission through CCF was analyzed using a complex network analysis method, informing the construction of a risk assessment model reflecting internal and external transmission dynamics. The model included the COVID-19 risk index, CCF consumption level, urbanization level, CCF trade quantity, and others. The risk level of COVID-19 transmission by CCF and the dominant risk types were analyzed at national and global scales as well as at the community level. The results were as follows. (1) The global CCF trade network is typically dominated by six core countries in six main communities, such as Indonesia, Argentina, Ukraine, Netherlands, and the USA. These locations are one of the highest sources of risk for COVID-19 transmission. (2) The risk of COVID-19 transmission by CCF in specific trade communities is higher than the global average, with the Netherlands-Germany community being at the highest level. There are eight European countries (i.e., Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Britain, Italy, and Poland) and three American countries (namely the USA, Mexico, and Brazil) facing a very high level of COVID-19 transmission risk by CCF. (3) Of the countries, 62% are dominated by internal diffusion and 23% by external input risk. The countries with high comprehensive transmission risk mainly experience risks from external inputs. This study provides methods for tracing the source of virus transmission and provides a policy reference for preventing the chain of COVID-19 transmission by CCF and maintaining the security of the global food supply chain.

Agricultural Openness and the Risk of COVID-19 Incidence: Evidence from China

At present, there are large number of articles on the impact of COVID-19, but there are only a few articles on the impact of COVID-19 and international agriculture. Agriculture product is different from other industrial products. If domestic food cannot be self-sufficient, it must be resolved through imports. This will inevitably face the dilemma between the opening up agriculture and the risk of importing COVID-19. This paper pioneered the use of entropy method, TOPSIS method and grey correlation analysis to predict the correlation between agricultural opening to the outside world and the input and spread of COVID-19. We use the correlation matrix quantifying the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and agricultural openness to deduce that there is a significant positive correlation between the flow of agricultural products caused by China’s agricultural opening-up and the spread of COVID-19, and use the proposed matrix to predict the spread risk of COVID-19 in China. The results of the empirical analysis can provide strong evidence for decision-makers to balance the risk of COVID-19 transmission with the opening of agricultural markets, and they can take this evidence into full consideration to formulate reasonable policies. This has great implications both for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and for agricultural opening-up.

COVID-19’s Impact on International Trade

We analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the trade of products between countries. With this aim, using the United Nations Comtrade database, we perform a Google matrix analysis of the multiproduct World Trade Network (WTN) for the years 2018–2020, comprising the emergence of the COVID-19 as a global pandemic. The applied algorithms—PageRank, CheiRank and the reduced Google matrix—take into account the multiplicity of the WTN links, providing new insights into international trade compared to the usual import–export analysis. These complex networks analysis algorithms establish new rankings and trade balances of countries and products considering all countries on equal grounds, independent of their wealth, and every product on the basis of its relative exchanged volumes. In comparison with the pre-COVID-19 period, significant changes in these metrics occurred for the year 2020, highlighting a major rewiring of the international trade flows induced by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. We define a new PageRank–CheiRank product trade balance, either export or import-oriented, which is significantly perturbed by the pandemic.

The external dependence of ecological products: Spatial-temporal features and future predictions

The instability of international trade can threaten the resource security of resource-importing countries, while international trade helps address spatial mismatches between regional populations, economies, and resources. Ecological products are the basis for human survival and development, in which agri-livestock products are especially sensitive to trade fluctuation and closely related to human well-being. The external dependence is an important indicator to reveal the external supply risk of regional resources. Scientific understanding the external dependence of ecological products can reveal the potential risks of trade fluctuations to human well-being and ecological sustainability. In this study, the global status and trend of countries' external dependence of agri-livestock ecological products are investigated. The results showed that nearly 80% (141) of countries relied on imports to meet ecological product demands in 2018, in which Asian-African-Latin countries accounted for about 78%, which indicated that the instability of international trade would threaten the ecological resource security in 80% of the world's countries, especially for underdeveloped countries. Even worse, 68% of countries are increasing their external dependence of ecological products. Even if the intensity of ecological resource exploitation reaches the maximum sustainable utilization level, 60% (113) of countries are expected to need imports for meeting their ecological product demands in 2050. Moreover, even considering the agricultural technological upgrade and the consumption transformation, more than 50% (94) of countries are still net importers of ecological products. Therefore, trade liberalization is still one of the important means to reduce resource security risks caused by trade instability. More notably, half of the countries in the world may sacrifice ecological sustainability to meet basic human well-being in the future under deglobalization.

Impact of Trade Openness on Food Security: Evidence from Panel Data for Central Asian Countries

The problem of food insecurity has become increasingly critical across the world since 2015, which threatens the lives and livelihoods of people around the world and has historically been a challenge confined primarily to developing countries, to which the countries of Central Asia, as typical transition countries, cannot be immune either. Under this context, many countries including Central Asian countries have recognized the importance of trade openness to ensure adequate levels of food security and are increasingly reliant on international trade for food security. Using the 2001-2018 panel data of Central Asian countries, based on food security's four pillars (including availability, access, stability, and utilization), this study empirically estimates the impact of trade openness and other factors on food security and traces a U-shaped (or inverted U-shaped) relationship between trade openness and food security by adopting a panel data fixed effect model as the baseline model, and then conducts the robustness test by using the least-squares (LS) procedure for the pooled data and a dynamic panel data (DPD) analysis with the generalized method of moments (GMM) approach, simultaneously. The results show that: (1) a U-shaped relationship between trade openness and the four pillars of food security was found, which means that beyond a certain threshold of trade openness, food security status tends to improve in Central Asian countries; (2) gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, GDP growth, and agricultural productivity have contributed to the improvement of food security. Employment in agriculture, arable land, freshwater withdrawals in agriculture, population growth, natural disasters, and inflation rate have negative impacts on food security; and (3) this study confirms that trade policy reforms can finally be conducive to improving food security in Central Asian countries. However, considering the effects of other factors, potential negative effects of trade openness, and vulnerability of global food trade network, ensuring reasonable levels of food self-sufficiency is still very important for Central Asian countries to achieve food security. Our research findings can provide scientific support for sustainable food system strategies in Central Asian countries.

Evolution of Global Food Trade Patterns and Its Implications for Food Security Based on Complex Network Analysis

Global food trade is an integral part of the food system, and plays an important role in food security. Based on complex network analyses, this paper analyzed the global food trade network (FTN) and its evolution from 1992 to 2018. The results show that: (1) food trade relations have increased and global FTN is increasingly complex, efficient, and tighter. (2) Global food trade communities have become more stable and the trade network has evolved from "unipolar" to "multipolar". (3) Over the nearly 30-year period, the core exporting countries have been stable and concentrated, while the core importing countries are relatively dispersed. The increasingly complex food trade network improves food availability and nutritional diversity; however, the food trade system, led by several large countries, has increased the vulnerability of some countries' food systems and brings about unsafe factors, such as global natural disasters and political instability. It is supposed to establish a food security community to protect the global food trade market, address multiple risks, and promote global food security.

U. Y, Jiang H. Trade vulnerability assessment in the grain-importing countries: A case study of China

Since the 2008 global food crisis, food security vulnerability has been a prominent topic in the food policy debate. However, vulnerability is inherently difficult to conceptualize and is more challenging to operationalize and measure. This study constructs a mathematical model and takes China as a case study to measure the vulnerability and sensitivity of China with its partners in the international grain trade. The results show that 1) the degree of interdependence between China and its grain trading partners is asymmetric, which generates trade vulnerability or economic power; 2) the vulnerability of China’s food trade shows a high spatiotemporal heterogeneity among countries: the higher vulnerability zones are concentrated in North America and Northeast Asia, and the scope of the higher vulnerability zones tends to expand; 3) Our results also reveal that China also has different sensitivities to fluctuations in grain markets from different countries, and the higher sensitive zones of the grain trade in China are mainly distributed in America, Europe, and Oceania. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a methodology for food trade vulnerability assessment and examines the influence of international food trade on food security in importing countries, measured using the vulnerability index and sensitivity index. Nevertheless, the conclusions of this study can be considered preliminary, and there remains great potential for future studies to deepen and broaden our analyses further.