If you click on the image below, you’ll get to see a 50-second BBC film giving some fascinating (and more than a tad worrying) stats about the global food trade:
For those of you who want to read the stats they provide, here they are:
- A third of the world’s population is involved in the global food trade.
- Trade increased by 60% between 2000 and 2013, in part because of increasing population.
- Prices are rising even faster.
- In the same period, the value of agricultural exports tripled to $1.4tr.
- Latin America is the biggest net exporter of food; it’s grown fivefold in the same period, to $166bn . . .
- While Asia, a net importer, has seen agricultural imports quadruple to $480bn.
- Some countries are heavily dependent on the rest of the world to supply their food; for example, the countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council import 80-90% of their food.