2.2.

Agent classes and attributes

2.2.1. Countries 

As previously discussed, for both conceptual and practical reasons, we

choose to represent countries as agents, which we believe is the most
suitable for the study and the research questions we will address, as well
as the most practical given the data and computational constraints. Each
country in the model has a list of attributes (table 1), including
geographic location, population size, GDP, production of (multi-
dimensional) food commodities, the country's historic trade
relationships with other countries and so on. We include the 165
countries in the world for which complete data of the food supply from
the FAO food balance sheet are available. The model is spatially explicit
in that the countries are represented spatially at a global scale.

The activities country agents engage in are the production, trade and
food intake, which is a multi-dimensional variable consisting of 91 food
commodities, consistent with those used in FAO food balance sheets
(FBS) (see §2.4.3). The production of food commodities in each country
is exogenous and changes every year depending on the scenarios. Once
the production for the year is revealed or completed, countries trade
with each other if they have unfulfilled domestic demand or unconsumed
domestic supply. A country's food supply is then a combined outcome of
its domestic production and trade with other countries. We do not
consider inequalities within a country in access to food, which can be
great in some countries. In this study, we focus on the average food
intake per capita, which we use to compare with food requirement per
capita, as an indicator of a country's food and nutrition security.
Indicators of country-specific inequality (such as the GINI index) can be
built into the model later on, which is beyond the scope of this study.

2.2.1.1. Trade intermediary 

For a given commodity, an intermediary country is one that imports food
for the purpose of re-exporting. intermediary countries are important
facilitators of trade.we define a country as an intermediary for the
commodity if the total export of the commodity is more than 80% of the
total import (i.e. the majority of import is for re-exporting) in 2000, the
baseline year. The motivation and trade behaviour of an intermediary
country will be different from other non-intermediary countries that
import for domestic consumption.
2.2.1.2. Typical diet 

We use the term ‘diet’ in the paper, but this is based on the national
supply of food taken from the FAO food balance sheets (FBS), adjusted by
the proportion that is inedible (e.g. banana peels) and wasted, which
differs by region. Typical diet varies across countries and reflects a
country's tradition and culture, as well as their natural and land-use
conditions. When considering nutrient sufficiency and dietary change,
we need to make sure that we do not naively prescribe countries an
‘ideal diet’ (nutritionally adequate) that is unrealistic to implement. In
the model, we use the average reported food consumption between 2000
and 2002 (to smooth out fluctuations in any one year) as the baseline for
each country's typical diet. The food composition in the typical diet
changes every year in proportion to global food production and supply,
to reflect the fact that the diet of people changes gradually (not
drastically) over time. We assume that a country will aim to obtain the
typical diet for its population in the current year; it will import a food
commodity if it produces less domestically than is needed in the typical
diet and export if it produces more. Some countries may fail to feed their
populations with the typical diet; nor does a country's typical diet
necessarily guarantee nutrient sufficiency, which reflects the situations
in reality.
2.2.1.3. Fortification 

In some countries where wheat is refined and stripped of fibre and

micronutrients, the flour and refined cereals are fortified replacing some
of the micronutrients. The most commonly fortified food is wheat (flour)
[53]. Hence, when calculating nutrient supply for each country, we need
to adjust for the nutrient content of wheat in each country depending on
if it is refined or not, then if the refined flour is fortified. This varies by
the income of countries, with higher income countries more commonly
refining than fortifying with micronutrients. The level of fortification also
varies by country. The refined flour and cereal, however, will have a
lower supply of fibre. Food composition values are derived from the
USDA food composition database (2014, release 27) [54]. Food
Fortification Initiative specifies whether food is fortified or not in a
country, and the income levels for countries are as specified by the
World Bank. 1

2.2.1.4. Household waste 

Food waste up to the point of the household is accounted for in the FBS,
but not waste generated in the household, after production and trade
where a certain percentage of food will be wasted. Not accounting for
household waste will lead to an overestimation of nutritional intake
based on food consumption. The amount of food wasted depends on the
type of food and the countries and regions. Generally speaking, countries
and regions that are wealthier waste more food at the household level.
Note that household waste does not include the part of food that is
inedible, such as banana peel, which has already been accounted for in
the nutrient calculation. Table 2 shows the percentage of food waste,
based on food that could have been eaten, in household consumption by
region and food type, which is estimated in Gustavsson et al. [52].

2.2.1.5. Nutrient requirements 

Because people in different gender–age groups have different nutritional

needs, the population-level nutrient requirement per person in a country
is based on the demographic composition of its population. Countries
with a larger young adult and male population will have a higher
nutrient requirement than those with an ageing population. The
demographic composition of a country will change over time, and so will
the population-level nutrient requirement. An adequate energy intake
was estimated using population-weighted average dietary energy
requirements (ADERs), calculated using data for each age and sex with
assumptions of physical activity level (PAL) being 1.75 and BMI being 21
kg m−2 for adults. The population-level nutrient requirement of a country
will be compared with the nutrient supply in the country in any given
year to determine a country's level of nutrient sufficiency. The nutrient
requirements are from the WHO [55,56].
2.2.2. Trade relationships between countries 

As previously said, the trade model will be relation-driven, which means

that trade decisions will depend on previous bilateral trade relationships
between countries as they engage in trade repeatedly over time, in
addition to their geographic location and ability to pay. We assume
countries rank each other with different trade priorities to determine
whom to trade with (assuming there are multiple competing buyers or
sellers). Trade priority will depend on four elements: (i) GDP per capita,
(ii) geographic distance, (iii) historic trade relationship, and (iv)
emergent trade relationship.

The first element, GDP per capita, serves as a proxy for a country's ability
to pay for a commodity. Priority is given to countries with a higher GDP
per capita or high ability to pay. The second element, geographic
distance between the two trading countries, is an important factor in
predicting trade volumes: countries close to each other tend to trade
more. One reason is the lower transport cost. Another reason is that
countries close to each other are also more familiar with each other, and
more likely to have a similar culture, customs and languages, all of which
facilitate trade [28].

The third element, historic trade relationship, is measured by trade

volume of all commodities in the year 2000. We use trade volume as an
indicator of the existing trade relationships established between the two
countries. As research has shown, countries that are more familiar with
each other (via common language, religion, institutional structure and
other social and cultural characteristics) trade more often [19,20,57].
While geographic proximity is one cause for enhanced familiarity and
trust between countries, there are other non-geographic factors, such as
historic connections (e.g. former colony, commonwealth) [58] and
international organizations or trade unions (e.g. OECD, EEA, Trans-
Pacific Partnership), that could cause some countries to have closer
connections and thus trade more. Historic trade volume will reflect these
non-GDP and non-geographic factors. We distinguish trade volumes by
exports and imports because they represent different roles in trade
relationships.

The last element, emergent trade relationship, allows new trade to

emerge endogenously and to influence subsequent trade development in
a path-dependent way. While the first three elements are exogenous to
the model and deterministic, the last element is endogenous and
stochastic. Trade relationship that evolved from the model has an impact
on future trade decisions. Two countries low on each other's trade
priority (due to low GDP per capita, long geographic distance or few
trade records before) can start a new trade relationship in a year when
they fail to trade with their usual partners (e.g. due to crop failure or
market disturbances). Such an ‘incidental’ new trade between the two
countries will increase their ranks in each other's trade priority, which
will in turn increase the chances that they trade again in the future.

The trade priority (for importing and exporting partners) assigned by

countries to one another is a weighted average of the four elements
above. The weights are calibrated using actual trade and consumption
data. We allow the weight to be zero in the search space, so that if any of
the above elements do not have a significant impact on trade patterns in
the empirical data, it will not have an effect in the model either. Although
the second and third elements may be correlated (e.g. many countries
that trade often are also geographically close), they do not coincide. For
example, countries that have developed historical trade links may not be
geographically close, such as the commonwealth countries; on the other
hand, geographically close countries may not trade as much, such as the
US and Cuba. Hence, we should still be able to distinguish the effect of the
four elements when calibrating the weights for the elements using
empirical data.
In this model, we do not try to emulate price dynamics or predict future
prices. Although prices are not explicitly modelled, the price mechanism
to allocate commodities among countries will be partially incorporated
in the ranking and matching process of trade partners through countries'
GDP per capita, geographic location, production, consumption and
dietary preferences. A country's GDP per capita and dietary preference
determine its purchasing power and willingness to pay for a product.
Moreover, a country's production reflects its overall productivity and
production costs of the food; its consumption reveals a country's budget,
dietary habits and preferences; its location is a proxy for transportation
costs. Therefore, although the model does not include the price
mechanism directly, it does implicitly incorporate the information that
prices contain.

2.2.3. Food and nutrients 

As was discussed before, we must look at a more comprehensive food list

than a few major crops to gain a better understanding of the nutrient
sufficiency, especially micronutrient sufficiency across countries. In this
study, we include 91 food categories as in FAO's FBS. Countries will
produce, trade and consume a different amount in each food category,
which we then use to calculate macro and micronutrients. The
aggregated groups to which each food category belongs are as follows:
‘Cereals – Excluding Beer’, ‘Starchy Roots’, ‘Sugar Crops’, ‘Sugar &
Sweeteners’, ‘Pulses’, ‘Treenuts’, ‘Oilcrops’, ‘Vegetable Oils’, ‘Vegetables’,
‘Fruits – Excluding Wine’, ‘Spices’, ‘Stimulants’, ‘Alcoholic Beverages’,
‘Meat’, ‘Offal’, ‘Animal fats’, ‘Eggs’, ‘Milk – Excluding Butter’, ‘Fish;
Seafood’, ‘Aquatic Products’ and ‘Other (e.g. Infant food and
miscellaneous)’.

The mapping of food to nutrients is based on data from the GENuS

project [59]. For a detailed description of the methodology see [46]. Each
of the 91 food categories, which are made up of many food items, was
disaggregated to individual food items. Each food commodity was then
mapped to the nutrient composition. A weighted mean of the nutrient
composition for the food items was used when the data were aggregated
back to the food commodity groups. This was based on the global
production of each food item within that group (FAO production data). If
there were no production data for food items in a food commodity, an
unweighted average was used. The nutrient data came primarily from
the USDA food composition data.  If any food item was not in the USDA
2

tables, the composition was taken from other regional food composition
tables. In this study, we exclude the nutrients for which the mapping
involves large uncertainties, leaving the following: calories (energy,
kcal), protein, fat, vitamin C, vitamin A, folate, calcium, iron, zinc, dietary
fibre, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6 and saturated fat.