Cereal import dependency ratio

Definition

The cereal import dependency ratio tells how much of the available domestic food supply of cereals has been imported and how much comes from the country's own production. It is computed as (cereal imports - cereal exports)/(cereal production + cereal imports - cereal exports) * 100. Given this formula, the indicator assumes only values ≤ 100. Negative values indicate that the country is a net exporter of cereals.

Relevance

A high cereal important dependency ratio can be correlated with low resilience of food systema to economic shocks. Therefore, in a county with low cereal important dependency, climate disasters such as floods or droughts can more rapidly lead to widespread shortages of staple grains, such as rice or wheat flour for bread.