Water is essential for crop cultivation and the crop trade includes the virtual water, or thevolume of water used to produce an agricultural commodity. This paper evaluates thevirtual water dependency and the characteristic of virtual water trade such as intensity andimbalance. Based on the water footprint and crop trade data, the virtual water trade of 41 cropswere quantifi ed from 2006 to 2010. The water dependency, i.e., the level to which a nationrelies on foreign water resources through virtual water trade, was then evaluated. The waterdependency of Korea exceeds 70 percent and wheat trade has the highest water dependencyof 99 percent, followed by maize and pulse crops. Therefore, the condition of foreign waterresources by agricultural disasters such as drought should be observed carefully to maintaina stable supply of wheat. In contrast, the water dependency of rice was much lower than othercrops. The virtual water trade intensity was calculated in order to evaluate the importanceof trading partners and USA and China were found as the most important trading partners.The trading intensity with Rumania, Ukraine, and Australia has been increased from 2006to 2010.The global virtual water trade could be concentrated to a few countries and it mightcause the supply problem. Therefore, we tried to evaluate the imbalance of virtual water tradeusing Gini’s coeffi cient. The results showed that the virtual water import was more imbalancedthan export in Korea. However, the export structure was more imbalanced in world trade. Inaddition, the virtual water exports of pulse crop, maize and rice showed more imbalance thanother crops. The international crop trade is essential for food security and leads to a globalredistribution of water resources. If the VWT is cornered by a few countries, the world wouldsuffer water shortages. Therefore, it is important to understand the water dependency andVWT intensity in Korea, and evaluate the imbalance of GVWT. The results of this study couldbe used for the basic data to establish the stable crop trade policy in a trend that the value ofwater is increased.
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