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

Food trade system and global agri-food chains have become vitally important for feeding the world’s population and ensuring food security. Agricultural trade has been growing in both volume and value with every year. The emergent question in this context is whether the dependency on food imports along with the occurrence of trade deficits threaten food security. In this chapter, the authors analyze the dynamics of agricultural trade balance in the case of EU-27 countries based on the 2015–2019 timeframe. The study is focused on the economic aspects of agricultural trade, food security threats, exploitation of natural resources, and the dynamics of international marketing. Additionally, the chapter emphasizes the structure of agricultural trade balance along 24 categories of agricultural products as defined in the United Nations Comtrade Database. Food trade issues are approached per country by studying trade balances for particular categories of agricultural products and the aggregated trade balance deficit of a country. It is revealed that the EU-27s overall agricultural trade balance is permanently positive (the highest surplus observed in 2019), even though there exists chronic dependency on the import of fish, crustaceans, mollusks, edible fruits, oil seeds and oleaginous fruits, industrial or medicinal plants, as well as coffee, tea, mate, and spices. The authors conclude that Germany is facing the highest deficit in agricultural trade followed by Sweden and Portugal. The Netherlands, Spain, and France, on the contrary, experience a permanent surplus in agricultural trade.