The global food trade is crucial for ensuring food security, but its impact on the environment often goes unnoticed. In a new data paper published in One Ecosystem, Dr Zhuofan Huang and Dr Zhenglei He introduce a thorough dataset that quantifies the biodiversity loss embodied in the international trade of staple food crops. This dataset offers a unique perspective on how food trade redistributes environmental pressures across borders.
The Dataset
The dataset covers the period from 1995 to 2022 and focuses on four major staple crops: wheat, soybean, rice, and maize. By combining bilateral trade data from UN Comtrade with agricultural production statistics from FAOSTAT and biodiversity loss intensity factors expressed as Potential Disappeared Fraction (PDF), this dataset translates food trade flows into measurable biodiversity loss transfers between countries.
Global Network
The resulting global network includes 157 countries and up to 91,414 trade relationships, providing insights into how biodiversity loss is transferred through international trade. Unlike previous studies that examine agricultural biodiversity impacts at national or sectoral levels, this dataset explicitly maps out how biodiversity loss is redistributed across borders through global food trade.
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Key Findings
The dataset reveals a significant upward trend in biodiversity loss embodied in global staple food trade. Among the four crops, soybean trade shows the most rapid increase, with biodiversity loss rising more than sixfold from 1995 to 2022 and surpassing wheat as the dominant contributor in recent years. The findings also highlight the central role of major agricultural producers and traders (including the United States, Brazil, China, Australia, and Argentina) in shaping global biodiversity loss patterns.
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Implications and Applications
The authors have made this dataset openly available, providing a valuable resource for interdisciplinary research and policy analysis.It can support assessments of environmental responsibility in food supply chains, help identify high-risk trade pathways, and inform the progress of more sustainable and equitable global food trade policies. These factors will contribute to biodiversity conservation and the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals 15 (Life on Land).
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This is a crucial step towards understanding the true impacts of food trade on our planet’s biodiversity.