ROME,30th November, 2024 (WAM) – International trade of food and agricultural products has grown robustly in recent decades and makes very significant contributions to food and nutrient diversity, availability and affordability around the world, a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) shows.
At the same time, trade can, in some contexts, be an accelerator of unwelcome changes in dietary patterns, boosting consumption of foods with low nutritional value, and high in fats, sugar and/or salt. This highlights the need to develop trade policies that are coherent with national nutrition and public health objectives, according to The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO) 2024.
“The expansion of global food trade has been influenced by multilateral trade rules that have shaped a freer, fairer, and more predictable trade environment, which, along with an increasing number of regional trade agreements, has promoted trade in food,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu.
The report, entitled Trade and Nutrition: Policy Coherence for Healthy Diets, emphasises the need to strengthen policy coherence between trade and nutrition sectors to make sure that trade does not undermine diet quality and contribute to rising rates of obesity and overweight.
It also notes that links between trade and nutrition are intricate and heterogeneous, and warrant closer attention. As incomes rise, a welcome effect of development, import demand for ultra-processed foods rises even faster, underscoring the utility of enabling policy-makers to consider the role of nutrition.
The SOCO 2024 report offers considerations of the role of modern regional trade agreements, which go beyond market access and tariff reductions and focus more on harmonizing non-tariff measures and domestic regulations covering standards related to additives, pesticide residues and labelling requirements.
It finds some evidence that regional trade agreements with a high number of sanitary and phytosanitary provisions tend to increase imports of ultra-processed foods, which are also notably more responsive to income changes.
Nearly 5 000 trillion kilocalories were traded in 2021, more than double the dietary energy traded in 2000. Daily per capita food trade increased to1 640 kcal from 930 over that time.
A 10% increase in income results in an 11% increase in the demand for imports of ultra-processed foods and a 7% increase in the demand for imports of unprocessed and minimally processed foods.
Between 1961 and 2021, the global per capita average dietary energy available for human consumption increased by 35%, from 2 200 to 2980 calories per person per day. In 1961, staple foods accounted for 57.4 percent and declined to 48.4%. The share of animal source foods grew from 12.2% to 15.1% and that of fats and oils increased from 8.4 to 12.7%.
Per capita trade in vitamin C and calcium from food increased by almost 90 percent between 2000 and 2021.
In 2020, countries produced an average of 120 different food items, while trade lifted the number of food items available to an average of 225, with significant growth recorded in the past decade.
Ultra-processed foods accounted for 7% of globally traded calories, and 12% of food imports in high-income countries in 2021. In monetary terms, the value of imported ultra-processed foods was much larger than their caloric share.