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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics

Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1549463

This article is part of the Research Topic Environmental Resilience and Sustainable Agri-food System Management View all 12 articles

Optimization of Grain Import Market Layout in the Context of Food Security: A Study of Soybean in China

Provisionally accepted
  • Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Major food-importing countries are characterized by highly concentrated import sources, which easily exposes them to risks of food supply shortages due to over-reliance on a limited number of source countries. Using China's soybean imports as a case study, this research proposes a novel analytical framework that specifically addresses the unique characteristics of agricultural products. A multi-objective optimization model is employed to both validate the framework's rationality and explore optimization schemes for China's import source layout. The results indicate that, first, neglecting seasonal factors in optimizing China's soybean import source layout may increase fluctuations in soybean import quantities. The import optimization considering seasonal factors can reduce risks at equivalent costs while ensuring import stability. Second, increased soybean export availability from Russia or Kazakhstan can further reduce risks at equivalent costs while ensuring the stability of soybean imports. This study establishes an analytical framework for optimizing import layout that conforms to the unique characteristics of agricultural products, aiming to achieve sustainable food supply and ensure food security in importing countries.

    Keywords: Market layout, Import risk, Seasonal factors, Supply potential, Multi-objective optimization model

    Received: 21 Dec 2024; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Wang and Lu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Xiaonan Wang, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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