Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Global Agricultural Transport Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Trade and the Climate Implications of Localization Strategies

Transportation has emerged as a major
contributor to
greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions worldwide. With increasing population growth and
food demand, the spatial decoupling of production and consumption
has intensified, driving a surge in transnational agricultural products
transportation. However, existing research lacks a systematic assessment
and future projection of GHG emissions from agricultural product transportation
across multiple transport modes worldwide. To address this gap, we
developed a global trade-linked transport GHG emission database by
integrating multisource data and modeling frameworks. Compared with
the research method in this paper, the previous great circle distance
as the GHG emission of agricultural product transportation mileage
was underestimated by 34%. This study systematically evaluates the
spatiotemporal evolution of agricultural transport GHG emissions from
2000 to 2021 and explores their mitigation potential under future
scenarios. Our findings reveal that global GHG emissions from agricultural
transport increased by 1.6-fold over the 21-year period, with rising
GHG emission intensity and trade density collectively shaping a high-carbon
flow pattern dominated by exports from the Americas to Asia. Future
scenario analyses indicate that the localization strategies proposed
in this study are not particularly effective in reducing transport-related
GHG emissions as inefficiencies inherent in localized agricultural
production can increase production-stage emissions and, in turn, result
in a net rise in total GHG outputs. These results suggest that future
strategies should prioritize optimizing trade structures while simultaneously
enhancing domestic agricultural productivity and promoting low-carbon
farming technologies to achieve net emission reductions at the source.