Importing food damages domestic environment: Evidence from global soybean trade

Abstract

Protecting the environment and enhancing food security are among the world's Sustainable Development Goals and greatest challenges. International food trade is an important mechanism to enhance food security worldwide. Nonetheless, it is widely concluded that in international food trade importing countries gain environmental benefits, while exporting countries suffer environmental problems by using land and other resources to produce food for exports. Our study shows that international food trade can also lead to environmental pollution in importing countries. At the global level, our metaanalysis indicates that there was increased nitrogen (N) pollution after much farmland for domestically cultivated N-fixing soybeans in importing countries was converted to grow high N-demanding crops (wheat, corn, rice, and vegetables). The findings were further verified by an intensive study at the regional level in China, the largest soybean-importing country, where the conversion of soybean lands to corn fields and rice paddies has also led to N pollution. Our study provides a sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom that only exports contribute substantially to environmental woes. Our results suggest the need to evaluate environmental consequences of international trade of all other major goods and products in all importing countries, which have significant implications for fundamental rethinking in global policy-making and debates on environmental responsibilities among consumers, producers, and traders across the world.

Global virtual water trade and the hydrological cycle: patterns, drivers, and socio-environmental impacts

“…Moreover, international food trade also may have negative environmental impacts in importing countries. For example, because of its reliance on imports, China is converting soybean croplands into corn fields and rice paddies with consequent increase in nitrogen pollution (Sun et al 2018). A related concept was developed by Galloway et al (2007), with the notion of 'virtual nitrogen' (or 'embodied nitrogen').…”

Understanding How Smallholders Integrated into Pericoupled and Telecoupled Systems

“…Interactions that occur between systems are intercoupling, while between adjacent systems are pericoupling and between distant systems are telecoupling. Telecoupling, among the three, was the first to be designed, and has been quickly adopted by scholars to explore land use changes [43][44][45][46], food security, and the role played by international trade [47], water transfer [48,49], and development and sustainability issues [26,50,51], to name a few. Later, pericoupling and intracoupling were proposed along with telecoupling to form the comprehensive metacoupling framework [42].…”

“…Elsewhere, smallholders in Heilongjiang, China, (No. 1) are embedded in the international flow of soybeans where, in this case, they receive soybean price information from the international market which motivates their decision to cultivate soybeans or not, depending on the commodity's price [45].…”

The environmental and socioeconomic trade-offs of importing crops to meet domestic food demand in China

“…Some people agree that importing grain, soybean, and meat products can reduce China's N pollution and spare domestic cropland (Galloway et al 2007, Oita et al 2016. On the contrary, Sun et al (2018) argues that importing N-fixation crops and converting cropland from soybean to other crops could increase domestic N pollution. The apparent disagreement could be resolved using our analyses of 'virtual' and 'alternative' concepts for N surplus and harvested areas.…”

“…However, heavily relying on food supply from a global trade system may expose a country to risks in the international market and lead to unintended environmental consequences for both the importing and exporting countries (Sun et al 2018). The risks in the international market include the uncertainty and instability caused by climate change, regional policy, food price and other factors (Fader et al 2013).…”