EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Water as a Self-organizing Force in Agricultural Production and Trade: Past, Present, and Future

Yuri Yegorov

Chapter Chapter 7 in Shifting Patterns of Agricultural Trade, 2021, pp 165-185 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Water is a crucial factor in agricultural production. Still being mostly a free factor of agricultural production, water nevertheless becomes increasingly scarce in many parts of the world. This scarcity cannot be easily tracked based on the current data on the value of global trade in food and agricultural products, because the latter is dominated by high value-added commodities rather than those crucial for the survival of people and combating hunger (like wheat, rice, and other crops). Still, disproportions could be observed. Brazil, the world’s largest net exporter of agricultural products, enjoys a high water endowment, while China, the biggest importer of food, suffers from water scarcity. In the past, when agricultural trade was relatively small due to high transportation costs, local water endowment affected not only agricultural production but also the settlement of people. Thus, water is a self-organizing force in agricultural production and trade, and this chapter aims to analyze the evolution of this role of water. Water scarcity is growing across the globe. It is caused by population growth, deforestation, and climate change. It influences agricultural production and global trade in food and it is likely to gain importance in the future.

Keywords: Agricultural trade; Land; Self-organization; Transport; Water (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-16-3260-0_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811632600

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-3260-0_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-16-3260-0_7