Food security and agriculture value-added: Do they asymmetrically matter for Korean environmental sustainability?

Abstract

AbstractLimited research has previously probed the interplay between Korea’s food security, agricultural sector, and environmental ramifications. This study delves into the asymmetric influence of food security and agricultural value-added on Korea’s carbon dioxide emissions (an environmental sustainability proxy) from 1970 to 2020, incorporating non-renewable energy consumption and foreign direct investment. Employing a nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag methodology, our findings unveil long-term asymmetric effects of food security and agricultural value-added on carbon dioxide emissions. Specifically, carbon dioxide emissions rise with positive shocks to food security and agricultural value-added but decline with negative shocks. Moreover, our analysis reveals that non-renewable energy consumption positively impacts carbon dioxide emissions, whereas foreign direct investment exerts a negative effect. These insights may underpin policy recommendations for the Korean government to bolster environmental sustainability.

Keywords

• Food security
• agriculture value-added
• environmental sustainability
• nonrenewable energy consumption
• foreign direct investment
• nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag methodology