International Agricultural Trade: Exporters and Importers

Abstract

Over the past decades, international agricultural trade has been booming in both volumes and range of products traded within and between the continents. In recent years, the globalizing food market has become increasingly volatile due to the growing intertwining of trade ties between countries, worldwide proliferating effects of economic crises, food price fluctuations, trade regulations and restric­tions, and many other factors. However, most of the contemporary trends in the development of international agricultural trade are based on the systemic interde­pendencies between production and exchange of agricultural products laid down in the past. Therefore, studying the past of agricultural trade is necessary to under­stand both current processes and future tendencies in the global market. This chapter retrospectively explores major parameters of agricultural trade in 2000–2019 across eight geographic regions, including East Asia and Pacific, South Asia, Central Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.