Impact Of Agricultural Product Trade On Global Cropland Soil Erosion

Soil erosion threatens global food security,affects habitat quality and hinders sustainable development.Soil erosion is potentially affected by socio-economic factors.Alleviating cropland soil erosion have become a key issue in the field of agricultural ecology,with the increasingly contradiction between food demand growth and cropland soil protection.International agricultural trade can meet food demand and lead to the potential transfer of cropland soil erosion,resulting in the spatial separation between local soil erosion and agricultural product consumption.Therefore,it is of great significance to assess the impact of agricultural trade on global cropland soil erosion,and thus put forward reasonable soil conservation strategies.In this study,the key targets are global cropland soil erosion and international agricultural trade in 2017.We evaluated the global cropland soil erosion and that in notrade scenario.In addition,we analyzed the impact of trade on global cropland soil erosion,and revealed the response of that to national economic variations,then further discussed the responsibility sharing of cropland soil protection.The main findings are as follows:Firstly,we found that hot spots of cropland soil erosion were mainly concentrated in East Asia,South Asia,South America and North America.Countries with prosperous agriculture,like China,India,the United States,and Brazil suffered serious cropland soil erosion,with corresponding proportions of global cropland soil erosion over 10%.In addition,there were obvious differences in the erosion intensity of different crop types.Among them,that of legumes was the highest,followed by cereal crops.Secondly,agricultural product trade generally increased 3% the global cropland soil erosion.43% of the trade in all countries reduced over 0.01% of cropland soil erosion,like China and India,while 25% of the trade increased over 0.01% of cropland soil erosion through the comparison between trade scenarios,such as United States,and Brazil.Middle East-North Africa was the region with the most significant reduction through trade.Moreover,the global trade of legume products greatly increased cropland soil erosion.Furthermore,economic levels had a prominent impact on cropland soil erosion impacted by trade.From the perspective of the change of cropland soil erosion induced by trade per capita,and per-unit GDP,cropland soil erosion of upper middle-income economics was significantly increased by trade,with the mean value of 154.05 t per 1000 persons,and 15.43 t per million US$ respectively,mainly concentrated in Latin America,such as Brazil and Paraguay.With the regard to the change rate of cropland soil erosion induced by agricultural trade,the results showed that trade had a significant effect on the mitigation of cropland soil erosion in low-income economics,with the mean decline of 11%,like that in Latin America.Cropland soil erosion had been significantly mitigated through trade in some regions like Middle East and North Africa,East Asia and Europe.Therefore,it is necessary to take financial and technical assistance to alleviate the cropland soil erosion in the risk regions such as Latin America.In summary,results of this study are significant to understand the impact of socioeconomic factors on soil erosion,and provide a scientific basis for optimizing agricultural trade,and thus promote international cooperation in cropland soil protection,and thus help to achieve sustainable development in agriculture.