 Our relationship with agriculture has changed dramatically. Just like other sectors, globalization has a growing influence on the types of foods we eat, as well as how and where those foods are grown. In fact, more than 20% of crop calories produced globally are now traded across international borders. I'm often asked whether a truly sustainable diet means eating only more locally produced foods whenever possible. It's easy to think about just how far some imported foods have been transported from farms in other countries, as illustrated in this map of global shipping routes. While transportation is important, we really need to consider how food has been produced in different locations around the world. Water is a good example of that. We use far more water in agriculture than for either household or industrial purposes. However, the sources and efficiency of that water use varies immensely from farm to farm and from region to region. The production of exports has been an important driver of new agricultural land use this century, particularly in the tropics. The production and demand of commodities like palm oil and soy has become intertwined with issues of land clearing and deforestation. However, trade also plays a crucial role in our food supplies, in the food supplies of many nations. This network graph shows the largest calorie flows in agricultural trade globally from exporting to importing countries. The growth of trade has created a complex web of interdependence among countries in terms of food security and the global environment, the implications of which we do not fully understand. But can trade play a role in agricultural sustainability by moderating resource use across countries? My lab at McGill University investigates questions related to food systems geography by synthesizing often publicly available data related to agriculture and food. For example, where this network map depicts the origins of the calorie supply for Germany. The boxes on the bottom compare total domestic calorie production with imports of calories from different source countries broken down in the green boxes. Many other European countries have diverse food import networks like this, which offers access to a variety of foods not grown domestically. However, some countries have very concentrated food import networks. The total calorie supply of Japan and Mexico is tightly linked to U.S. crop production. This raises questions about how easily countries could adapt their food sourcing in the face of supply disruptions such as extreme weather. We can also examine how much land is used to produce these food imports. Many countries are now effectively outsourcing a large share of the land use underlying their food consumption. For hundreds of millions of people, this implies growing reliance and potentially less certain access to foreign sources of food and the resources needed to grow it. This trend is facilitated by other countries becoming more export-oriented in the terms of the types of crops that they're growing. Many of the countries in the top map use more of their croplands to grow exports than for their own domestic food consumption. Other countries are effectively exchanging their food exports for food imports grown on a similar amount of land in other countries. The global soy trade is perhaps the clearest example of export specialization over the past two decades. Just three countries produce an export 80% of soy globally. However, what this really is is a story of growing demand for animal products globally as much of the soy is used as livestock feed by importing nations. Agricultural trade such as this can theoretically spare resources by improving average resource use efficiency compared to a world with no trade. This happens when countries with relatively more land or water-intensive production instead import some of their food from other countries with higher levels of agricultural efficiency in a relative sense. For example, the United States is by far the leading maize exporter globally and produces maize with yields per unit area about 80% higher than the global average. However, export specialization also raises questions about whether we're concentrating the environmental burden of food production in certain regions and also whether or not it could undercut livelihoods abroad for farmers. In the end, we can't generalize about food trade. However, I do think we can learn from the saying not to put all of our eggs in one basket. A diversity of local, regional, and global sourcing is likely to provide the greatest resilience to our food supplies in the face of shocks and to maximize what each scale does best. As food consumers, we're also increasingly urban and this compounds the challenges of globalization in separating us from food production. This reconnection with agriculture may be one of the most important roles of local foods. However, we need all scales of food production acting locally and acting globally to feed the world. Thank you.