Main changes in food trade in europe and the world under COVID-19 restriction

Abstract

Restriction during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to all aspects of life, in food consumption and foreign trade. This raises questions about local and intercontinental food trade and transport. The aim of this paper is to describe the European and global changes, focusing on their background and causes. Its methods are to examine the foreign trade data of the main food products in the WITS database using a trend function and to investigate possible changes by calculating the Balassa index. The first results show that in absolute terms, the value of foreign trade has not decreased for most food products, but that there has been a decrease for almost all food products compared to the expected value of the trend function. In addition to Ukraine's significant decline in competitiveness indicators, Russia's positive performance warrants further research. As well as China's significant competitiveness decline, the good performance of the US requires further analysis and comparison. The main conclusions of this research are that COVID-19 has also had an impact on food supply. There is a need to maintain and support local markets and regional trade in the face of global food trade, as only they can remain stable during these crises and austerity.