International food trade increased the food security gap between high and low economic development groups

Abstract

International trade serves as a crucial pathway for enhancing global food security and equality amid severe food crises worldwide. Under globalization, economic development has profoundly influenced food trade, while disparities in food purchasing power among different economic development groups have led to uneven food security outcomes. However, the varying contributions of international trade to food security across these groups remain to be quantitatively elucidated. This study categorized countries into four economic development groups—high, high-medium, medium-low, and low—and examined changes in their food security scores from 2010 to 2019. The cross-group contributions of international trade to food security across these groups were compared. The results revealed that the food security score of the high economic development group was 9.22 times higher than that of the low economic development group. From 2010 to 2019, the high economic development group exhibited a significant upward trend in food security scores, whereas the low economic development group showed a significant decline. Moreover, international trade contributed significantly to both cross-group and within-group food security in the high economic development group, while its contribution to the low economic development group remained negligible. These findings demonstrated that international trade has further widened the food security gap between the high and low economic development groups, and its limited contribution to the low economic development group has failed to reverse the declining trend in their food security scores. This study quantified the divergent impacts of international trade on food security across economic development groups, providing valuable insights for optimizing global food trade policies—particularly in addressing the food security challenges faced by low econominc development group.

Keywords

Food supply and demand / Food security / International trade / Economic development group / Cross-regional

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Zihan Xu: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Methodology, Conceptualization. Tianyi Wu: Writing - review & editing. Tao Hu: Writing - review & editing, Methodology. Yanxu Liu: Writing - review & editing. Jian Peng: Writing - original draft, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Yanxu Liu/Jian Peng is an Young Editorial Board Member/Editorial Board Member for this journal and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 42361144888 and 42401308), and National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFF1309200).

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2025.100402.

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