Material Hide‐and‐Seek: Looking for the Resource Savings Due to International Trade of Food Products

Abstract

International trade of food products reduced the rise of material footprint in our sample on a global scale.  A trade-off between material efficiency improvement and material stock accumulation is detected.  Domestic efficiency improvements tend to substitute for food imports.

A comprehensive review of Hungarian futures studies in light of international journal articles

“…Dombi et al [ 17 ] carried out a socio-economic metabolism examination to compare household-level material flows and stocks to economy-wide material inputs and explore factors affecting the level of metabolism [ 34 ] at the household level. According to Dombi et al [ 19 ], there is no incentive to reduce the material stock accumulation in the future under the current economic conditions; however, urbanization and the increasing share of the service sector in economic output might support the sustainability transition due to its lower material input and emissions, while accelerating economic growth at the same time [ 15 ]. The management of material stock is central for reducing emissions and for optimizing natural resource use [ 16 ].…”

International food trade and natural resources

“…A simple Heckscher-Ohlin framework where comparative advantages are based on relative endowments of factors of production, market integration leads natural resource-intensive food production to relocate to countries that are abundant in land and water. For instance, Dombi et al (2021) uses a multi-regional input-output table to explore the material footprint of food consumption and provide a decomposition of the various factors that have driven the increase in environmental pressures between 1990 and 2013. Population growth appears the main force in increasing natural resource use, whereas international trade counteracts this tendency by shifting production to areas with a lower material footprint.…”