Global cropland and greenhouse gas impacts of UK food supply are increasingly located overseas

Abstract

Producing sufficient, healthy food for a growing world population amid a changing climate is a major challenge for the twenty-first century. Agricultural trade could help alleviate this challenge by using comparative productivity advantages between countries. However, agricultural trade has implications for national food security and could displace environmental impacts from developed to developing countries. This study illustrates the global effects resulting from the agricultural trade of a single country, by analysing the global cropland and greenhouse gas impacts of the UK's food and feed supply. The global cropland footprint associated with the UK food and feed supply increased by 2022 kha (+23%) from 1986 to 2009. Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) associated with fertilizer and manure application, and rice cultivation remained relatively constant at 7.9 Mt CO2e between 1987 and 2008. Including GHGE from land-use change, however, leads to an increase from 19.1 in 1987 to 21.9 Mt CO2e in 2008. The UK is currently importing over 50% of its food and feed, whereas 70% and 64% of the associated cropland and GHGE impacts, respectively, are located abroad. These results imply that the UK is increasingly reliant on external resources and that the environmental impact of its food supply is increasingly displaced overseas.

Keywords: food supply; global environmental impacts; international trade; land use; self-sufficiency.

Figure 1.

Overseas impact of UK food and feed supply on cropland use and carbon emissions as percentage of total impact.

Figure 2.

Relative contribution of the different world regions to the UK's cropland footprint. Colours show the change in percentage points of the world regions’ contributions to the total UK cropland footprint from 1986 to 2009. Proportional circles show the relative contribution of the world regions to the UK's cropland footprint in 2008 (3-year mean).

Figure 3.

Cropland footprint for the UK calculated from a production and consumption perspective for 1987 (left) and 2008 (right). The values are 3-year means around the respective years. NA, North America; CA, Central America and Caribbean; SA, South America; EU, EU15+; FSU, Former Soviet Union; SSA, Sub-Saharan Africa, NA and WA, North Africa and Western Asia; E Asia, East Asia; S Asia, Southern Asia; SE Asia, Southeast Asia; OCE, Oceania.