Food trade of China saved global land but increased water appropriation and carbon emissions from 2010 to 2020

Abstract

Global food trade has been growing and diverse with environmental burden shifting across the trade bilateral partners. However, the temporal evolution of the environmental impacts and resources degradations embedded in food trade remains unclear for the recent decades. This study analyzes China’s food supply and trade relationships of 71 food items with 174 countries and territories from 2010 to 2020, examining the associated water, land, carbon footprint (WF, LF and CF) based on the bottom-up method, as well as the corresponding virtual water, land, carbon flows and resources saving. Results show that WF and LF of Chinese food consumption increased while CF decreased over the period. National net virtual water, land and carbon imports more than doubled, mainly due to the import of legumes and nuts from Latin America. Trade conserved 56.6 Mha/yr of land but consumed 30 Gm³/yr of water and raised net carbon emissions by 56 Mt/yr in 2020. This analysis shows a crucial view on the non-negligible role of a certain country’s food trade network changes on global environmental degradations though worldwide food productivity improvements.