Spatio-temporal evolution and influencing factors of international soybean trade network from a telecoupling perspective

Based on the international soybean trade relationship matrix for six time sections from 1995 to 2020, this paper identified the telecoupling system of soybean trade and the direction and the intensity of trade flow with the help of social network analysis from the perspective of telecoupling, and analyzed the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics and influencing factors of the international soybean trade network. The results show that: (1) The international soybean trade is becoming more and more widely linked by telecoupling, but the whole is in a weakly connected state. And the network cohesiveness and connectivity are increasing with certain characteristics of a small-world structure. (2) Soybean sending systems are concentrated in a few American countries, soybean receiving systems are numerous and mainly distributed in the Eastern Hemisphere, and developing countries such as India and South Africa have prominent spillover effects as trade intermediary points. With China, Brazil and the United States as the absolute core, the international soybean trade network shows an obvious polarized structure. (3) The cohesive subgroups of the soybean trade network show a spatial evolution of structure from a fragmented collection of small areas to a geopolitical agglomeration of large areas. (4) Geographical distance, manufacturing development level and soybean production area are the core driving factors of soybean trade network evolution. Soybean production area has a significant positive effect on trade volume, and geographical distance has a significant negative effect on trade relationship. However, in the weighted network, the influence of geographical distance is positive, which means that the coupling effect between long-distance systems with complementarity is stronger. (5) There is a positive relationship between soybean expansion area and forest loss area in some trading countries, especially in South American exporters such as Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Soybean trade transfers the pressure of resources and environment from many importers in Asia and Europe to a few exporters in South America.