Since late 2019, an outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread all over the world, challenging the sustainability of global agri-food markets. Although its full impact on agricultural and food markets is not yet evident, we have some early evidence on the different impacts. The aim of this article is to summarize the early evidence by screening global newspaper articles and sites written on the topic until 10 April 2020. The most read English-based newspaper articles were downloaded and accessed together with a Google search on specific keywords in order to have a complete picture of the topic. Results suggest that agriculture-related pandemic effects can be grouped into supply, demand, labour, food security, food safety, trade and other effects. It is also evident that the first impacts are not one-sided: what helped some hurt others. This article can serve as a basis for future research on the topic by identifying and highlighting the key topics as well as summarizing the earliest evidence available.
In line with the development of international trade, environmental concerns have arisen as a global problem. International trade has the potential to increase environmental externalities such as transboundary pollution, deforestation, transportation and production relocation avoiding environmental standards. The share of agricultural goods in total export reached 15% in 2017. Since 2002, the proportion of unprocessed agricultural products have more than doubled, while the volume of processed goods in global trade has tripled. Despite the importance of agricultural trade worldwide, the number of studies exploring the trade-agriculture-environment nexus has so far been limited. This paper aims to provide an overview of the environmental impacts of agricultural trade based on the international economics literature published in recent years by way of a systematic literature review. Results suggest that most recent environmental studies do not view extended trade or trade liberalization in agriculture favourably. Only a limited number of papers state that a country or countries’ environment could benefit from agricultural trade, and only a few researchers have found that agricultural trade did not have any significant influence at all, or have instead found the effects on the environment to be ambiguous. Finally, the research reveals the most important consequences of pollution and offers potential solutions.
Purpose Comparative advantage is an important indicator in the analysis of international trade flow; however, in empirical studies on agriculture it is often neglected. The purpose of this paper is to analyse global comparative advantage in the European Union (EU) wine industry and to test the duration and stability of trade indices. Design/methodology/approach The paper applies the theory of comparative advantages by using the Balassa indices to European wine trade (based on the 16 biggest producers) data from the period 2000-2013. Moreover, it applies stability and duration analysis on comparative advantages calculated. Findings Results suggest that Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain are the highest ranked European wine producers in the world market and have the largest comparative advantages. However, duration and stability tests indicate that trade advantages have weakened for the majority of these countries. The paper discusses a number of reasons for this downturn, including changes to Common Agricultural Policy wine regulation, economic crisis, and the rise of New World wine producers. Originality/value The originality of the paper is that it applies the theory of comparative advantage to top wine exporters in the EU. The paper also makes valuable contributions to the wine literature by analysing the duration and stability of comparative advantage in the global wine trade. Moreover, the identification of industry-specific causes for changing patterns in comparative advantage in the EU might be important to the wine industry.
Intra‐industry trade (IIT) has become a widespread phenomenon with a growing role in international trade, though agricultural trade is usually neglected in empirical works. This article identifies the determinants of horizontal and vertical intra‐industry agri‐food trade between New Member States (NMS) and the EU‐27 in 1999–2010, by applying static and dynamic models with different specifications to panel data. Results show that IIT is mainly of a vertical nature in the NMS, though the majority of NMS export low quality agri‐food products to EU‐27 markets. Factor endowments are negatively related to agri‐food horizontal intra‐industry trade (HIIT), but positively to vertical intra‐industry trade (VIIT). Economic size is positively and significantly related to both types of IIT, while distance and IIT are found to be negatively related in both cases. Results also suggest that HIIT and VIIT are greater if a New Member State exports agri‐food products to another NMS while EU accession has had positive and significant impacts on both HIIT and VIIT, suggesting that economic integration fosters IIT.
In 2004 and 2007, twelve New Member States (NMS) joined the European Union (EU), causing several changes in the field of agriculture. One of the major changes was the transformation of the national agri-food trade. The aim of the paper is to analyse the effects of the EU accession on the NMS agri-food trade, especially considering the revealed comparative advantages. The results suggest that the intensity of the NMS agri-food trade has increased significantly after the accession, though there was a serious deterioration in the NMS agri-food trade balance in most cases. It has also become evident that the NMS agri-food trade was highly concentrated by country and by product, though the concentration has not changed significantly after the EU accession. Moreover, our analyses highlight one of the most important characteristics of the NMS agri-food trade structure – the focus on the agri-food raw materials in export together with the agri-food processed products in import. As to the NMS agri-food trade specialisation, the diversity among member states becomes apparent. Almost all countries experienced a decrease in their comparative advantage after the accession, though it still remained at an acceptable level in most cases. As for the stability of the comparative advantage, the results suggest a weakening trend, underpinned by the convergence of the pattern of revealed comparative advantage. By estimating the survival function to the sample, it can be observed that the accession has radically changed the survival time of agri-food trade, meaning that the revealed comparative advantage has not turned out to be persistent in the period analysed. From the policy perspective, there is a clear need for structural changes in the NMS agriculture and agri-food sector in order to tackle the negative tendencies of the national agri-food trade. The most important long-term goal should be the production and export of higher value-added processed products based on domestic raw materials.
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