Human demand for agri-food products contributes to environmental degradation in the form of land-use impacts and emissions into the atmosphere. The EU is the third largest importer of food products in the world. In this study, we quantify emissions (carbon dioxide, particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide), land use, employment and income-related impacts embodied in EU’s demand for agri-food products. We trace these environmental and social impacts across EU’s trading partners to identify specific sectors and regions as hotspots of international spillovers embodied in EU’s food supply chains and find that these hotspots are wide-ranging in all continents.

Tracing spillovers for the European Union by country of origin of imports for CO2

EU’s food demand is responsible for 5% of the EU’s total CO2 consumption-based footprint, 9% of the total NOX footprint, 16% of the total PM footprint, 6% of the total SO2 footprint, 46% of the total land-use footprint, 13% of the total employment footprint, and 5% of the total income footprint. Our results serve to inform future reforms in the EU for aligning policies and strategies with the SDGs and the objectives of the Paris Agreement by offering evidence on sectors and countries most impacted.

Sector-level spillover impacts for environmental indicators, according to producing sectors that feed into EU’s food supply chains

The European Green Deal and fit for 55 packages aim to make the EU the first carbon neutral continent in the world. Yet, EU’s consumption of goods and services lead to environmental impacts elsewhere in the world, including Greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation and social impacts, which need to be monitored and addressed.  Overall, by providing granular assessments of where in the world those negative environmental impacts take place and which specific agri-food commodities are responsible for such impacts (e.g., meat and fish, crop growing, cocoa, livestock farming etc.) we hope that this study provides a useful contribution to help inform policies that aim to align specific supply chains with the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement.

“Making globalisation and trade work for people and planet: International spillovers embodied in the European Union’s (EU’s) food supply chains” in partnership with the University of Sydney and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).