Collaborative Research: HNDS-I: A global seafood trade network database for sustainable food systems, human health, and nutrition security

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Around the world, over a quarter of all food is traded internationally. Global trade can provide foods at lower prices, supply more types of foods year-round, and resist local supply shortages, such as crop failures. At the same time, global trade has drawbacks and can pose a risk to food security. For example, environmental disasters can create supply shortages that are passed on to importing countries or nutritious foods can be redirected away from domestic markets. Seafood is an important source of nutrition around the world and is among the most highly traded foods. As a result, it is important to understand when global seafood trade either improves or threatens food and nutrition security. This grant will support the construction of a database that will track the flows of products in the global seafood market. The database will include information on the kinds of seafood that are being traded across countries, who is selling it and who is buying it, and how this network of buyers and sellers changes over time. This project will construct the Aquatic Resource Trade in Species (ARTIS) database which will show the global flow of seafood species for the first time. This database will enable research on the environmental and human outcomes of food system globalization, including a better understanding of the conditions under which trade promotes environmental sustainability, human health, and food security. Research in these areas has been limited by missing data and, for the data that exist, mismatches in the taxonomic and product resolution of the data. The ARTIS database will use techniques of optimization to align public data sets. These linked datasets will be joined to new data on the nutrient content of different kinds of seafood. ARTIS will be available to researchers by publishing the underlying data and code, archiving the data and code with a downloadable R package, and development of an interactive website that will allow users to explore the seafood trade without downloading data or requiring coding skills. The ARTIS database will be important for answering pressing questions about the role of global seafood trade in sustainable food production and nutrition security. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.