The rapidly increasing global food trade

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.

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The Birmingham Food Council is a Community Interest Company registered in England and Wales number 8931789