Water is essential for crop cultivation and the crop trade includes the virtual water, or the volume of water used to produce an agricultural commodity. This paper evaluates the virtual water dependency and the characteristic of virtual water trade such as intensity and imbalance. Based on the water footprint and crop trade data, the virtual water trade of 41 crops were quantifi ed from 2006 to 2010. The water dependency, i.e., the level to which a nation relies on foreign water resources through virtual water trade, was then evaluated. The water dependency of Korea exceeds 70 percent and wheat trade has the highest water dependency of 99 percent, followed by maize and pulse crops. Therefore, the condition of foreign water resources by agricultural disasters such as drought should be observed carefully to maintain a stable supply of wheat. In contrast, the water dependency of rice was much lower than other crops. The virtual water trade intensity was calculated in order to evaluate the importance of 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 2006 to 2010.The global virtual water trade could be concentrated to a few countries and it might cause the supply problem. Therefore, we tried to evaluate the imbalance of virtual water trade using Gini’s coeffi cient. The results showed that the virtual water import was more imbalanced than export in Korea. However, the export structure was more imbalanced in world trade. In addition, the virtual water exports of pulse crop, maize and rice showed more imbalance than other crops. The international crop trade is essential for food security and leads to a global redistribution of water resources. If the VWT is cornered by a few countries, the world would suffer water shortages. Therefore, it is important to understand the water dependency and VWT intensity in Korea, and evaluate the imbalance of GVWT. The results of this study could be used for the basic data to establish the stable crop trade policy in a trend that the value of water is increased.
展开▼
