Food Security Concerns under Geopolitical Risk: Land Expansion, Trade Distortions, and Environmental Costs

This paper examines how geopolitical risk reshapes food security strategies, agricultural land allocation, trade, productivity, and environmental outcomes. We argue that rising geopolitical uncertainty increases concerns over the availability and reliability of external food supplies, encouraging countries to adopt defensive strategies centered on domestic agricultural capacity. Using a country-year panel from 2016 to 2022 that combines geopolitical risk measures with land-cover data, agricultural trade flows, agricultural total factor productivity, ecological footprint indicators, and macroeconomic controls, we document several findings. Higher geopolitical risk is associated with agricultural land expansion, forest loss, and weaker urbanization, suggesting that food security concerns raise the strategic value of domestic agricultural land. Geopolitical risk also reduces agricultural exports and net agricultural exports, while its effect on imports is weaker and statistically insignificant, indicating a retreat from trade-oriented specialization. These adjustments are accompanied by lower agricultural total factor productivity and a larger ecological footprint, consistent with resource misallocation and environmental pressure induced by defensive agricultural expansion. The effects are generally weaker among net agricultural exporters, which face less pressure to expand domestic production capacity because of their stronger initial food-supply position. These findings reveal a trade-off between national resilience and economic and environmental efficiency: strategies designed to secure food availability under geopolitical uncertainty may reduce external vulnerability, but they can also generate land-use distortions, productivity losses, and environmental costs.