How do natural disasters affect agricultural exports?

doi:10.1016/j.jia.2025.12.064

Journal of Integrative Agriculture

2026, Vol. 25

Issue (5): 2148-2166 DOI: 10.1016/j.jia.2025.12.064

Agricultural Economics and Management

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How do natural disasters affect agricultural exports?

Yifang Liu¹, Xiaojuan Wang², Yaxian Hu³, Chaoping Xie^4#

¹School of Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 102206, China

²School of Economics, Xi’an University of Finance and Economics, Xi’an 710100, China

³School of Management Science and Engineering, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 102206, China

⁴College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China

Highlights
● Natural disasters significantly reduce agricultural exports from affected countries, with larger negative effects than those in other sectors.
● Different types of disasters affect agricultural exports through distinct cost channels: geological disasters raise transport costs, climatic disasters disrupt production systems, and biological disasters increase storage and compliance costs.
● The adverse effects are stronger in less developed and low-disaster-risk countries, and spill over from primary to processed agricultural products along the supply chain.

Abstract
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摘要

全球农产品贸易在平衡粮食供需、驱动经济增长及维护政治稳定中发挥着关键作用。然而，农业对极端天气和自然灾害的固有脆弱性易通过贸易链条进一步放大，从而威胁全球粮食安全。本文基于2002至2023年的数据，系统研究了自然灾害造成的人员伤亡与经济损失，并识别了其对国际农产品贸易的影响机制与效应。研究发现，自然灾害导致受灾国农产品出口量显著下降，受损程度远超其他行业；尽管农产品具有较强的需求缺乏弹性，但出口总额仍大幅萎缩，折合年均损失达62.1亿美元并波及39,359个就业岗位。机制分析表明，地质、气候与生物灾害分别通过增加运输成本、破坏生产系统以及抬升仓储合规成本来阻碍出口。此外，灾害对欠发达国家的影响更为剧烈，不仅削弱了其产品竞争力，还导致出口价格下跌并加剧灾害冲击；低风险国家则因缺乏应急经验面临约205.3万美元的出口损失。研究还发现，政治风险会放大自然灾害的负面效应，且灾害对初级产品的破坏会通过供应链延伸至加工产品，其次生效应是直接影响的2.83倍。本文结论强调，各国应亟需建立灾害预防与恢复机制，以最大限度减少农业贸易损失并保障全球粮食安全。

Abstract Global agricultural trade helps to balance the supply and demand for food worldwide, stimulating economic growth and promoting political stability. However, agriculture’s inherent vulnerability to extreme weather events and other natural disasters has a significant impact on the industry, which is further amplified through trade and can threaten global food security. This study examines both the mortality and economic losses caused by natural disasters and identifies the mechanisms through which these disasters affect international agricultural trade from 2002 to 2023. The results show that natural disasters cause a decline in the volume of agricultural exports from affected countries, which is much larger than the decline observed in other industries. Despite the high demand inelasticity of agricultural products, which typically leads to increased export prices when production declines, the value of exports still declined significantly over the study period, implying an average annual export loss of 6.21 billion USD and 39,359 jobs. Geological disasters primarily hinder agricultural exports by increasing transportation costs, climate-related disasters by damaging production systems, and biological disasters by increasing storage and compliance costs. We show that disasters have a more devastating effect on agricultural production in less developed countries, which diminishes their global product competitiveness, reduces export prices, and intensifies overall disaster impacts. We also show that countries with low disaster risk, which lack emergency response experience, incur up to 2.053 million USD in agricultural export losses due to disasters. In addition, political risks interact with natural disasters, thereby amplifying their negative impact on agricultural exports. In terms of product heterogeneity, we find that the destructive impact of disasters on primary agricultural products extends through the supply chain to processed agricultural goods, affecting both their production and export. We show that disasters exert an even broader influence on the agricultural system through secondary effects that are 2.83 times greater than the direct impacts. Our findings provide valuable insights and highlight the need for countries affected by disasters to establish disaster prevention and recovery mechanisms to help minimize agricultural trade losses and safeguard global food security.

Keywords: natural disasters agricultural export food security risk assessment sensitivity analysis

Received: 11 September 2024 Accepted: 22 May 2025 Online: 31 December 2025

Fund:

This work is supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (19BTJ059), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71934005; 72442023), the Humanities and Social Sciences Project of the Ministry of Education, China (19YJAZH058), and the Beijing Social Science Fund Project, China (23JCC086).

About author: Yifang Liu, E-mail: liuyifang08@163.com; #Correspondence Chaoping Xie, E-mail: chaoping_xie@outlook.com

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