According to a brand-new research study, we require to change the worldwide food system in order to significantly minimize greenhouse gas emissions.
“Just shrinking the size of our current food system won’t cut emissions much. Instead, we need to transform the very nature of that global food system,” states Benjamin Bodirsky, a scientist at Potsdam and the World Vegetable Center in Tainan, Taiwan, and author of a brand-new research study released in the journal Nature Food
“That means on the one hand that people consume what they need in terms of nutritional requirements, curb food waste and eat a more balanced diet, with much more vegetables and less animal products. On the other hand, a qualitative transformation means more efficiency, hence producing food in a less-polluting way: smarter dosing of fertilizers or planting higher-yield crops. Also, carbon pricing could help steer farmers towards lower-emission agricultural practices, because emitting less then means paying less. Put together, this could drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
The method we produce food and handle our land is accountable for as much as a 3rd of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions along the whole supply chain. “So we looked at what this system would look like in a hypothetical degrowth world: On the basis of a review of degrowth proposals, we created a set of scenarios to feed into a food and land systems computer simulation to explore their effect on the food system,” David Chen, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and author of the research study, describes. “We took a step back from the heated normative debates about degrowth. What we found is that the current food system is basically unsustainable for any society, regardless of economic growth rates.”
The simulations reveal that just slowing development in abundant nations would not yield substantial sustainability advantages in the food system. Financial transfers from greater- to lower-income nations within the existing advancement paradigm might even increase emissions. That is since carbon-intensive diet plan modifications towards animal items and processed foods are most noticable when nations advance from low to medium earnings.
However, when the researchers consisted of intake modifications and effectiveness gains incentivized by a rate on carbon, the outcomes revealed an enhanced dietary result for all customers, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and, as an outcome, likewise less financial activity in farming needed for food production. “For the food sector, we can say that a certain degree of degrowth would be the result of the sustainable transformation, not the starting point,” states Hermann Lotze-Campen, co-author from the PotsdamInstitute “So basically this is not really about less but about different growth.”
Importantly, a sustainable food system change that considers all expenses for the environment would require a minor boost in food costs– felt specifically by the bad, the researchers reveal. Any change thus need to be accompanied by a well-thought-out policy mix of clever taxing plans, social settlement for CO2 rates, and worldwide transfers. Also, making farming more climate-friendly, such as by managing nitrogen streams in croplands, needs financial investment. These expenses, nevertheless, are most likely balanced out by the repair of environment services.
Reference: “Integrating degrowth and efficiency perspectives to enable an emission-neutral food system” by Benjamin Leon Bodirsky, David Meng-Chuen Chen, Isabelle Weindl, Bjoern Soergel, Felicitas Beier, Edna J. Molina Bacca, Franziska Gaupp, Alexander Popp and Hermann Lotze-Campen, 16 May 2022, Nature Food
DOI: 10.1038/ s43016-022-00500 -3
