Apart from its macroeconomic implications, international trade
in food products is closely intertwined with food security and the
debate on food self-sufficiency versus specialization in agriculture.
The degree of self-sufficiency is normally measured by a food selfsufficiency
ratio or the share of domestic production in total
domestic use. Our results show that this ratio falls slightly for most
of the Asian countries, indicating their increasing dependence on
international food markets. This signals a likely rise in virtual water
trade, as has been projected in several studies (Konar et al., 2013;
Rosegrant et al., 2002) since exporting less water-intensive crops
allows for the import of a greater amount of more water-intensive
foods than what would be produced if the domestic production
were devoted to high water-consuming crops.