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Library Agricultural trade and virtual land use: The case of China's crop trade

Agricultural trade and virtual land use: The case of China's crop trade

Agricultural trade and virtual land use: The case of China's crop trade

Resource information

Date of publication
december 2013
Resource Language
ISBN / Resource ID
AGRIS:US201500217523
Pages
141-150

Trade liberalization has greatly accelerated the volume of traded agricultural products in past decades. As land resources become more limited in some countries, international trade plays an important role in compensating for land scarcity in these countries. This paper aims to measure and locate the virtual land use hidden in China's imports and exports, for both primary crops and processed products, from 1986 to 2009. The results show that as China's crop imports had grown greatly during the last decade, the net virtual land trade hidden in international trade had increased from −4.42Mha in 1986 to 28.90Mha in 2009. The main category of virtual land imports had changed from cereals to oil crops, which accounted for 82.2% of the total virtual land imports in 2009. Over the two decades the main source of virtual land imports had changed from North America to both South America and North America. International trade could also lower demand for land resources at the global level: our results showed that China's crop trade was contributing to global land savings by 3.27Mha on annual average during 1986–2009. Economic development, and associated dietary changes and policy shifts were linked to the change of China's virtual land trade pattern. To make land use more sustainable at the global level, both importing and exporting countries of virtual land should consider ecological and socio-economic impacts of these trade flows in their policies.

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Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s)

Qiang, Wenli
Liu, Aimin
Cheng, Shengkui
Kastner, Thomas
Xie, Gaodi

Publisher(s)
Data Provider
Geographical focus