Quantification of Virtual Land Resources in China’s Crop Trade

The liberalization has greatly accelerated the volume of international trade of agricultural products in past decades.International trade has become increasingly important in connecting areas with resource surplus and deficit.Trade in agricultural commodities is ultimately an exchange of services and resources incorporated into the traded goods.Resources flow and the associated ecological impacts have been a hotspot in agricultural trade and environment study.This paper attempts to contribute to both the calculation method of the virtual land use and China’s virtual land quantification of crop trade.It aims to: 1) explore the method to quantify the virtual land hidden in agricultural trade flows.The conversion factors have been used to calculate the processed products based on the caloric equivalent method and the product tree method.2) The virtual land use hidden in the imports and exports of China’s crop trade was measured,considering both primary products and their processed products trade with other countries in 1986-2009,from both the producer and consumer’s perspective to illustrate the results more clearly.The results show that China’s crop products import has increased greatly during 1986-2009,the virtual land use hidden in international trade has increased from-442.6 × 104 hm2 in 1986 to 2 889.0 × 104 hm2 in 2009,the changing trend and the quantity varied between different categories,the main category of the virtual land use has changed from cereal crops to the oil crops,which take 88.0% of the whole virtual land use in 2009,soybean takes the major weight of the oil crops import;the geographic location of the virtual land use has changed from the North America to the South America,the North America and the Southeast Asia;the crop trade between China and other countries releases China’s land use pressure,but the socio-economic and environmental impact of the virtual land also need to be assessed in order to make the virtual land use sustainable.