Economic Aspects of International Agricultural Trade and Possible Threats to Food Security in the EU-27: A Systematic Statistical Approach

Vasile, A. J.; Chivu, Luminiţa; Constantin, Marius; Subić, J.

doi:10.1007/978-981-16-3260-0_10

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Similar projects have been implemented throughout Romania's counties; however, there is still a long way to go before the water collecting, treatment, and distribution network is standardized. The challenges exist in rural areas, where considerable portions of the population still lack access to sewerage facilities, according to a report by the National Institute of Statistics; the population connected to sewerage systems represented 55.8% of Romania's resident population in 2020, and the population connected to sewerage systems equipped with treatment plants represented 54.5% of Romania's resident population [88]. These statistics lay the groundwork for establishing a more effective development strategy.…”

Section: Research Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Efficient adaptation to shocks, the emergence of change, and embracing it with proper managerial techniques and resilience, which all require coordinated and concentrated efforts to maximize intersectoral synergies and minimize trade-offs [51] as well as proper management of the use of water, energy, land and other crucial resources, does not only encompass an environmental perspective, but an economic perspective as well [52]. This is a major challenge, especially for developing countries, which are still facing issues in achieving food, water, and energy security, which is directly correlated to climate change issues [53,54]. However, food loss and waste represent opposite global issues with significant economic implications yet are specific to developed countries.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Water, Energy, Food, Waste Nexus: Between Synergy and Trade-Offs in Romania Based on Entrepreneurship and Economic Performance

et al. 2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Boosting the externalities across the water, energy, food, and waste (WEFW) sectors is challenging, especially considering tightening constraints such as population growth, climate change, resource-intensive lifestyles, increased waste production, sanitary crises and many others. The nexus approach supports the transition to a more sustainable future because intersectoral trade-offs can be reduced and externalities exploited, making imperative for decision makers, entrepreneurs, and civil society to simultaneously engage, with respect to all the components of the nexus. This research addressed intersectoral synergies and trade-offs in the case of the WEFW nexus in Romania, judging from the perspectives of entrepreneurial activity and economic results. The objective of this research was to explore the nexus in-depth by statistically analyzing the financial and economic indicators reported by active enterprises at county-level, based on the Romanian Ministry of Public Finance data. Research results describe the effects of the policies implemented in the fields of WEFW sectors. At the same time, attention was paid to the quality of the entrepreneurial activity, analyzed from the perspective of economic performance. This paper fills a research gap regarding the WEFW nexus by resorting to an economic and entrepreneurial performance assessment in order to find sectoral pathways toward policy cohesion in Romania. Findings suggested the existence of major trade-offs among sectors, owing to the fact that each county has a different development degree.

show abstract

Section: Research Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water, Energy, Food, Waste Nexus: Between Synergy and Trade-Offs in Romania Based on Entrepreneurship and Economic Performance

et al. 2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There are authors who believe that such a conflict will compromise the progress made over the past decade through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the area of food security [31]. Not only does the Russian-Ukrainian conflict imply an increase in geopolitical tensions and socio-economic struggles [32,33], but it also involves a reconfiguration of economic competitiveness [34]. Achieving and maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage in terms of agri-food products trading has been difficult even before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict or the COVID-19 pandemic, due to many influencing factors, as identified in the literature: the conflicting sustainability-related goal of achieving global food security simultaneously with aiming for economic development obtained through high product specialization and levels of competitiveness [35,36], finding pathways for mitigating the impact of agricultural activities on climate change [37,38], managing trade wars [39,40], and other relevant factors.…”

Section: A Brief Literature Review Of the Concept Of Competitivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deliver Smart, Not More! Building Economically Sustainable Competitiveness on the Ground of High Agri-Food Trade Specialization in the EU

Constantin

Sapena

Apetrei

et al. 2023

Foods

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Competitiveness has always been a multifaceted illusive concept, which has made it a real challenge for scholars and practitioners to find the most suitable measurement tools to completely encapsulate all the complex nuances of competitiveness. This becomes even more of a challenge when approached in relation to particular economic sectors. The agri-food sector is no exception, especially when considering all its interconnections with the other sectors: water, energy, transport, waste. All of them impact the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Similarly, scholars have been debating the meaning of sustainability for decades, some even arguing that it is a political, subjective, and, in some cases, self-contradictory concept. As far as the sustainability of agricultural competitiveness is concerned, the literature is still developing. It is much more focused on fostering environmental competitiveness, and less attention was paid to the strategies designed to capitalize on sustainable economic competitiveness—a concept that has attracted divergent opinions in the literature, mainly due to ambiguity. Thus, instead of falling into the pitfall of vagueness, this paper was aimed at bringing its contribution to this field by undertaking the research objective of exploring a single facet of sustainable agricultural competitiveness: the economic facet. Hence, this paper proposes the construction of the sustainable economic competitiveness index (SECI) with direct application for agri-food value chains. It consists of three attributes: (a) factor endowments, resource independence; (b) agricultural chain performance; and (c) national agricultural chain strategies and policies. In this study, SECI was tested against the cereal chain for a selection of EU countries, based on the data taken over from FAOSTAT and INTRACEN Trade Map, in the case of the 2011–2020 period. Various statistical and econometric methods were used to test the robustness of SECI. Results stand as proof that building sustainable agricultural economic competitiveness relies on a mix of strategic actions. The key vector in this mix is that trade flow patterns and policies must be calibrated in accordance with national factor endowments in order to achieve high levels of SECI. To add more managerial implications, this paper argues for the smart delivery of agri-food products with high added value instead of focusing on exporting big volumes of raw agricultural materials with little added value.

show abstract

“…On top of that, resilience, as a dynamic concept, focuses more on long-term adaptation strategies rather than on short-term solutions for managing risks (Petrescu et al, 2022;Arslan, Belotti, and Lipper, 2017). According to other authors, by developing the agricultural trade balance, both the resilience and competitiveness will increase (Andrei et al, 2021). From another point of view, resilience could be understood as the capacity of agricultural systems to adapt to any kind of perturbation, in the present scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to transition to sustainable development (Beia et al, 2020).…”

Section: Review Of the Scientific Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Resilience of Agricultural Comparative Advantage During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Constantin¹,

Piștalu²,

Pătărlăgeanu³

et al. 2022

New Trends in Sustainable Business and Consumption

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The agricultural sector is crucial for economies around the world, not only due to its role in ensuring food security, but also for capitalizing on the competitive advantages in a profitable and sustainable manner. The competitiveness of the agricultural sector has been highly debated in the literature. There are many welldeveloped methods for quantifying the different facets of agricultural competitiveness, most of which have a strong economic valence. One of the facets of competitiveness is resilience, the capacity to withstand the challenges that occur during periods of crisis while maintaining initial functions, if not improving them. Although the competitiveness of the agricultural sector has caught the attention of scholars, the literature is not abundant in studies dedicated to the analysis of the resilience of the agricultural sector's competitiveness. Thus, this study was aimed at bringing its contribution to the literature by tapping into the resilience of the agricultural comparative advantage in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of this research was to assess Romania's agricultural comparative advantage and its associated resilience levels in the face of the negative effects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the global agri-food supply chains by resorting to the Balassa index. Data were extracted from the International Trade Center INTRACEN database and used to calculate the revealed comparative advantage for two different periods: before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings showed that tobacco-based products were the most resilient and not only did those products maintain their level of competitiveness, but they also managed to become more competitive. On the other hand, although Romania is highly competitive in terms of exporting cereals, the resilience of this agri-food category proved to be poor during the COVID-19 pandemic. The same was observed in the case of oil seeds and oleaginous fruits. The drought from 2020 significantly contributed to these unfavorable results for Romania. This paper provides support and assists decision makers in the process of adopting measures aimed at increasing the resilience and competitiveness of the Romanian agricultural sector.

show abstract

Economic Aspects of International Agricultural Trade and Possible Threats to Food Security in the EU-27: A Systematic Statistical Approach

Cited by 9 publications

References 33 publications

Water, Energy, Food, Waste Nexus: Between Synergy and Trade-Offs in Romania Based on Entrepreneurship and Economic Performance

Water, Energy, Food, Waste Nexus: Between Synergy and Trade-Offs in Romania Based on Entrepreneurship and Economic Performance

Deliver Smart, Not More! Building Economically Sustainable Competitiveness on the Ground of High Agri-Food Trade Specialization in the EU

The Resilience of Agricultural Comparative Advantage During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About