© Dusan Kostic/Adobe Stock Authored by HFFA Research, this study offers a critical reassessment of the EU’s virtual land trade and agricultural self-sufficiency, using updated methodologies to evaluate the external land use dependencies embedded in agricultural imports and exports.
Agricultural trade remains a contentious issue in EU policy debates, with recent trade negotiations such as TTIP and CETA spotlighting concerns around food security and environmental sustainability. Central to this debate is the concept of virtual land trade—the external land resources embedded in agri-food trade—which reveals the EU’s reliance on foreign ecosystems to meet domestic demand.
This multi-year research effort quantifies the EU’s virtual land imports and exports, revisiting earlier methodologies with the latest data to provide more accurate indicators. The study also examines agricultural self-sufficiency across key commodities, highlighting the structural dependencies and productivity gaps driving land use externalisation.
The EU continues to net import nearly 20 million hectares of virtual agricultural land annually, despite reductions since 2007.
Imports remain particularly high for protein and oil crops, driven by feed and biofuel demand.
Some supplier regions facing domestic resource constraints are net land exporters to the EU, raising sustainability concerns.
Increasing EU agricultural productivity is identified as a key strategy to improve self-sufficiency and reduce external land dependence.
The study establishes a revised standard for tracking virtual land trade and self-sufficiency metrics in EU agriculture.