TY - JOUR
T1 - Food and feed trade has greatly impacted global land and nitrogen use efficiencies over 1961–2017
AU - Bai, Zhaohai
AU - Ma, Wenqi
AU - Zhao, Hao
AU - Guo, Mengchu
AU - Oenema, Oene
AU - Smith, Pete
AU - Velthof, Gerard
AU - Liu, Xia
AU - Hu, Chunsheng
AU - Wang, Peiguang
AU - Zhang, Nannan
AU - Liu, Ling
AU - Guo, Sujuan
AU - Fan, Xiangwen
AU - Winiwarter, Wilfried
AU - Ma, Lin
N1 - This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31572210, 31272247), Program of International S&T Cooperation (2015DFG91990), President’s International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) of CAS (2016DE008, 2016VBA073 and 2019VCA0017), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS (2019101) and Distinguished Young Scientists Project of Natural Science Foundation of Hebei (D2017503023). The input of P.S. contributes to the N-Circle China–UK Virtual Joint Centre on Nitrogen, funded by the Newton Fund via UK BBSRC/NERC (grant BB/N013484/1). Z.B. also thanks Francesco N. Tubiello from FAOSTAT for help with interpreting the data and results, FAOSTAT for providing the functional data used in this study, and Y. Cui, J. Liu, S. Xu, Y. Wang, M. Guo, S. Zhao and Y. Cao for helping collect the data at early stage.
PY - 2021/10/14
Y1 - 2021/10/14
N2 - International trade of agricultural products has complicated and far-reaching impacts on land and nitrogen use efficiencies. We analysed the productivity of cropland and livestock and associated use of feed and fertilizer efficiency for over 240 countries, and estimated these countries’ cumulative contributions to imports and exports of 190 agricultural products for the period 1961–2017. Crop trade has increased global land and partial fertilizer nitrogen productivities in terms of protein production, which equalled savings of 2,270 Mha cropland and 480 Tg synthetic fertilizer nitrogen over the analysed period. However, crop trade decreased global cropland productivity when productivity is expressed on an energy (per calorie) basis. Agricultural trade has generally moved towards optimality, that is, has increased global land and nitrogen use efficiencies during 1961–2017, but remains at a relatively low level. Overall, mixed impacts of trade on resource use indicate the need to rethink trade patterns and improve their optimality.
AB - International trade of agricultural products has complicated and far-reaching impacts on land and nitrogen use efficiencies. We analysed the productivity of cropland and livestock and associated use of feed and fertilizer efficiency for over 240 countries, and estimated these countries’ cumulative contributions to imports and exports of 190 agricultural products for the period 1961–2017. Crop trade has increased global land and partial fertilizer nitrogen productivities in terms of protein production, which equalled savings of 2,270 Mha cropland and 480 Tg synthetic fertilizer nitrogen over the analysed period. However, crop trade decreased global cropland productivity when productivity is expressed on an energy (per calorie) basis. Agricultural trade has generally moved towards optimality, that is, has increased global land and nitrogen use efficiencies during 1961–2017, but remains at a relatively low level. Overall, mixed impacts of trade on resource use indicate the need to rethink trade patterns and improve their optimality.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85117194323&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s43016-021-00351-4
DO - 10.1038/s43016-021-00351-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85117194323
SN - 2662-1355
VL - 2
SP - 780
EP - 791
JO - Nature Food
JF - Nature Food
IS - 10
ER -