China's Food Supply Sources Under Trade Conflict With the United States and Limited Domestic Land and Water Resources

Wenfeng Liu (1) , Hong Yang (2) , Philippe Ciais (1, 3) , Matti Kummu (4) , Arjen Hoekstra (5)

1 LSCE - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement [Gif-sur-Yvette]
2 EAWAG - Swiss Federal Insitute of Aquatic Science and Technology [Dübendorf]
3 ICOS-ATC - ICOS-ATC
4 Aalto University
5 NUS - National University of Singapore

The U.S.-China trade conflict has already considerably reshaped China's food imports, and should the conflict continue, it might have substantial impacts on global food supply dynamics as well as China's food supply sources. We address these implications by analyzing recent trends in China's food imports and associated use of land and water resources. We show that China's limited land and water availability will make it challenging to replace soybean imports from the United States with its own production, but switching to new trading partners by investment and cooperation could secure China's food supply while avoiding much negative environmental impacts on exporting countries. Plain Language Summary The U.S.-China trade conflict has substantial impacts on international food market and China's food supply. We answer the question how China can safeguard its food supply in the context of trade conflict by tracking China's recent food imports and embodied virtual water and land imports. We find that China may have to diversify its trade partners for compensating reduction in imports from the United States and pay attention to avoid unintended environmental impacts on food source countries.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère; Interfaces continentales, environnement

Wenfeng Liu, Hong Yang, Philippe Ciais, Matti Kummu, Arjen Hoekstra. China's Food Supply Sources Under Trade Conflict With the United States and Limited Domestic Land and Water Resources. Earth's Future, 2020, 8 (3), ⟨10.1029/2020EF001482⟩. ⟨hal-02969236⟩