## 2 Global Trade of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables  
Ensuring food chain supplies worldwide is a huge task that influences the world food trade market with a focus on essential foods for human nutrition including fruits, vegetables, and processed plant-based foods such as juices and jams. The challenges of meeting future food needs will require a concerted effort from stakeholders, food sector enterprises, governments, and governmental institutions, to improve the functioning of food and agricultural markets. After the peak reached in 2018, global volumes of fruit and vegetable trade have followed a downward trend down to 87 million tons of global trade in 2020. The observed tendency can be explained as an overall acceleration in the growth of booming categories, accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic's disruptions which caused logistical difficulties worldwide in several ways. This situation had a significant impact on the marketing of vegetables and fresh fruits due to a sharp decrease in out-of-home consumption related to the closure of catering outlets and restaurants, and the limited availability of workers. In turn, European Union (EU) exports outside of the Single Market went down to record low levels to 3.9 million tons, although value continued increasing up to EUR 4.6 billion. Europe constitutes an attractive and diverse target market for fresh fruits and vegetables for suppliers in developing countries. The large volumes necessary for the 500 million consumers are responsible for 44% of the global trade value, representing over EUR 60 billion. Moreover, the overall demand is relatively stable, while prices and short-term needs change regularly. The international trade of fruits and vegetables, however, continues to be dominated by the United States (US). The major destinations and sources  
Figure 1: Global and societal challenges in the production of foods for the next generations. of supply in fruits and vegetables remain in the EU, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) area, and Asia (East, Southeast, and South). A significant share of their trade is still dominated by intraregional trade, particularly that of the EU. However, these regions depend on Southern Hemisphere countries--Chile, South Africa, and New Zealand--for imports of off-season fresh fruits and juices, and on Equatorial regions for bananas. Germany (9%), the Netherlands (6%) the United Kingdom (6%), and France (5%) are the major importer markets, while Spain and the Netherlands are the largest exporters. In Asia, China is the largest exporter and Japan is the largest importer while within the NAFTA countries Mexico is the main exporter and the US accounts for most of the fruit and vegetable imports [7]. In Europe, Spain and Italy gather 40% of vegetable production and more than 50% of fruit (including citrus). Italy remains the largest European fruit- and vegetable-producing country. Asia is the leading producer of vegetables with a 61% total volume output and a yearly growth of 51%. However, the US continues to lead in the export of fresh fruits and vegetables worldwide with oranges, grapes, and tomatoes. Brazil dominates the international trade of frozen orange juice concentrate, while Chile has become the major fresh fruit exporter with a production volume of 45%. World fruit production went up 54% between 2019 and 2000, to 883 million tonnes, which represents an increase of 311 million tonnes. Bananas and plantains (18%), watermelons (11%), apples (10%), oranges (9%), and grapes (9%), accounted for 57% of the total fruit production in 2019 (Figure 2a). Despite the significant increase in fruit production, 6% between 2000 and 2019, which corresponds to an increase of more than 300 million tons, the production of the main fruit varieties during the same period remained almost constant (Figure 2a). Compared to fruit production, the world vegetable production grew faster between 2000 and 2019 to 1128 million tonnes in 2019, corresponding to an increase of 65%.