Data Sheet 1_Economic and environmental correlates of EU food trade: no evidence of an emission-oriented sourcing pattern.pdf

The environmental variables, by contrast, carry little explanatory power: neither partner agricultural greenhouse gas emissions per capita nor the partner’s renewable-energy share is significantly associated with either trade direction. The only significant environmental term is the dissimilarity in agricultural emissions per capita on the export side over the full period, and it enters positively — EU exports rise as partners become less alike in emissions.

Because the measure is an absolute difference, it does not reveal whether partners have higher or lower emissions than the EU, and it therefore provides no support for an emission-oriented export pattern.</p>Discussion<p>The evidence shows no emission-oriented sourcing pattern in EU agri-food trade. Because the analysis relies on territorial rather than embodied emissions and on a single aggregate food category, it is not a direct test of the food neo-colonialism hypothesis; it does, however, indicate that economic characteristics, labour productivity and research intensity, are more robustly associated with EU agri-food trade than any of the environmental indicators considered here.

For sustainable food systems, this strengthens the case for embedding consumption-based emission monitoring and sustainability conditionality in the external dimension of the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy.</p>