The true cost of food: a preliminary assessment

Ensuring sustainable food systems requires vastly reducing their environmental and health costs while making healthy and sustainable food affordable to all. One of the central problems of current food systems is that many of the costs of harmful foods are externalized, i.e., are not reflected in market prices. At the same time, the benefits of healthful foods are not appreciated. Due to externalities, sustainable and healthy food is often less affordable to consumers and less profitable for businesses than unsustainable and unhealthy food. Externalities and other market failures lead to unintended consequences for present and future generations, destroying nature and perpetuating social injustices such as underpay for workers, food insecurity, illness, premature death and other harms. We urgently need to address the fundamental causes of these problems. This chapter sets out the results of an analysis to determine the current cost of externalities in food systems and the potential impact of a shift in diets to more healthy and sustainable production and consumption patterns. The current externalities were estimated to be almost double (19.8 trillion USD) the current total global food consumption (9 trillion USD). These externalities accrue from 7 trillion USD (range 4–11) in environmental costs, 11 trillion USD (range 3–39) in costs to human life and 1 trillion USD (range 0.2–1.7) in economic costs. This means that food is roughly a third cheaper than it would be if these externalities were included. More studies are needed to quantify the costs and benefits of food systems that would support a global shift to more sustainable and healthy diets. However, the evidence presented in this chapter points to the urgent need for a system reset to account for these ‘hidden costs’ in food systems and calls for bold actions to redefine the incentives for producing and consuming healthier and more sustainable diets. The first step to correct for these ‘hidden costs’ is to redefine the value of food through true-cost accounting (TCA) so as to address externalities and other market failures. TCA reveals the true value of food by making the benefits of affordable and healthy food visible and revealing the costs of damage to the environment and human health 3

Challenges, solutions and research priorities for sustainable rangelands

Australia’s rangeland communities, industries, and environment are under increasing pressures from anthropogenic activities and global changes more broadly. We conducted a horizon scan to identify and prioritise key challenges facing Australian rangelands and their communities, and outline possible avenues to address these challenges, with a particular focus on research priorities. We surveyed participants of the Australian Rangeland Society 20th Biennial Conference, held in Canberra in September 2019, before the conference and in interactive workshops during the conference, in order to identify key challenges, potential solutions, and research priorities. The feedback was broadly grouped into six themes associated with supporting local communities, managing natural capital, climate variability and change, traditional knowledge, governance, and research and development. Each theme had several sub-themes and potential solutions to ensure positive, long-term outcomes for the rangelands. The survey responses made it clear that supporting ‘resilient and sustainable rangelands that provide cultural, societal, environmental and economic outcomes simultaneously’ is of great value to stakeholders. The synthesis of survey responses combined with expert knowledge highlighted that sustaining local communities in the long term will require that the inherent social, cultural and natural capital of rangelands are managed sustainably, particularly in light of current and projected variability in climate. Establishment of guidelines and approaches to address these challenges will benefit from: (i) an increased recognition of the value and contributions of traditional knowledge and practices; (ii) development of better governance that is guided by and benefits local stakeholders; and (iii) more funding to conduct and implement strong research and development activities, with research focused on addressing critical knowledge gaps as identified by the local stakeholders. This requires strong governance with legislation and policies that work for the rangelands. We provide a framework that indicates the key knowledge gaps and how innovations may be implemented and scaled out, up and deep to achieve the resilience of Australia’s rangelands. The same principles could be adapted to address challenges in rangelands on other continents, with similar beneficial outcomes

Articulating the effect of food systems innovation on the Sustainable Development Goals

Food system innovations will be instrumental to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, major innovation breakthroughs can trigger profound and disruptive changes, leading to simultaneous and interlinked reconfigurations of multiple parts of the global food system. The emergence of new technologies or social solutions, therefore, have very different impact profiles, with favourable consequences for some SDGs and unintended adverse side-effects for others. Stand-alone innovations seldom achieve positive outcomes over multiple sustainability dimensions. Instead, they should be embedded as part of systemic changes that facilitate the implementation of the SDGs. Emerging trade-offs need to be intentionally addressed to achieve true sustainability, particularly those involving social aspects like inequality in its many forms, social justice, and strong institutions, which remain challenging. Trade-offs with undesirable consequences are manageable through the development of well planned transition pathways, careful monitoring of key indicators, and through the implementation of transparent science targets at the local level

Articulating the effect of food systems innovation on the Sustainable Development Goals

Food system innovations will be instrumental to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, major innovation breakthroughs can trigger profound and disruptive changes, leading to simultaneous and interlinked reconfigurations of multiple parts of the global food system. The emergence of new technologies or social solutions, therefore, have very different impact profiles, with favourable consequences for some SDGs and unintended adverse side-effects for others. Stand-alone innovations seldom achieve positive outcomes over multiple sustainability dimensions. Instead, they should be embedded as part of systemic changes that facilitate the implementation of the SDGs. Emerging trade-offs need to be intentionally addressed to achieve true sustainability, particularly those involving social aspects like inequality in its many forms, social justice, and strong institutions, which remain challenging. Trade-offs with undesirable consequences are manageable through the development of well planned transition pathways, careful monitoring of key indicators, and through the implementation of transparent science targets at the local level

Articulating the effect of food systems innovation on the Sustainable Development Goals

Acknowledgments MH, DM-D, JP, JRB, AH, GDB, CMG, CLM, and KR acknowledge funding from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. PKT, BMC, AJ, and AML acknowledge funding from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, which is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund and through bilateral funding agreements. PP acknowledges funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for the BIOCLIMAPATHS project.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Understanding the Impacts of Soil, Climate and Farming Practices on Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration: a Simulation Study in Australia

Carbon sequestration in agricultural soils has the capacity to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to improve soil biological, physical and chemical properties. The review of literature pertaining to soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics within Australian grain farming systems does not enable us to conclude on the best farming practices to increase or maintain SOC for a specific combination of soil and climate. This study aimed to further explore the complex interactions of soil, climate and farming practices on SOC. We undertook a modeling study with the APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) modeling framework, by combining contrasting Australian soils, climates and farming practices (crop rotations, and management within rotations, such as fertilization, tillage and residue management) in a factorial design. This design resulted in the transposition of contrasting soils and climates in our simulations, giving soil-climate combinations that do not occur in the study area to help provide insights into the importance of the climate constraints on SOC. We statistically analyzed the model’s outputs to determinate the relative contributions of soil parameters, climate and farming practices on SOC. The initial SOC content had the largest impact on the value of SOC, followed by the climate and the fertilization practices. These factors explained 66%, 18% and 15% of SOC variations, respectively, after 80 years of constant farming practices in the simulation. Tillage and stubble management had the lowest impacts on SOC. This study highlighted the possible negative impact on SOC of a chickpea phase in a wheat-chickpea rotation and the potential positive impact of a cover crop in a sub-tropical climate (Queensland) on SOC. It also showed the complexities in managing to achieve increased SOC, while simultaneously aiming to minimize nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions and nitrate leaching in farming systems. The transposition of contrasting soils and climates in our simulations revealed the importance of the climate constraints on SOC

Agricultural diversification for crop yield stability: a smallholder adaptation strategy to climate variability in Ethiopia

Climate variability threatens food system stability, particularly among smallholders in developing countries who depend on rainfed agriculture. Farm diversification could be a relevant adaptation strategy in this context as a greater number of species or a more even distribution of crops is postulated to have a stabilizing effect on farm output as compared to a homogeneous farm. In this study, we aimed to explore relationships between climate variability, agricultural diversity, and crop yield stability. We used agriculture-focused panel data from Ethiopian households surveyed over four waves from 2011 to 2018 and two climate datasets to derive measures of long-and short-term climate variability. In a twofold analytical approach, we used mixed effects models to separately model (i) farm richness and pastoralism prevalence with climate variability as predictors, and (ii) crop yield stability with diversity, farm input, and climate characteristics as predictors. We found that farm diversity is highest in areas with high temperature variability, or low rainfall variability. This held even when excluding pastoralists households, who have naturally lower diversity. We further showed that pastoralism is least common in areas with high temperature variability and low month-to-month rainfall variability. Both crop richness and crop evenness positively affected temporal yield stability, with each showing a greater effect than irrigation, fertilizer, and pesticide usage. Together, these findings suggest that shifts in typical ranges of climate variability could destabilize farm-level crop yield for smallholders by limiting diversification opportunities. Our findings highlight the need for researchers and policymakers to consider not only the direct effects of climate variability on crop yield, but also its indirect effects on yield stability caused by increasingly limited adaptation choices

Climate change and variability impacts on grazing herds: insights from a system dynamics approach for semi-arid Australian rangelands

Grazing livestock are an important source of food and income for millions of people worldwide. Changes in mean climate and increasing climate variability are affecting grasslands' carrying capacity, thus threatening the livelihood of millions of people as well as the health of grassland ecosystems. Compared with cropping systems, relatively little is known about the impact of such climatic changes on grasslands and livestock productivity and the adaptation responses available to farmers. In this study, we analysed the relationship between changes in mean precipitation, precipitation variability, farming practices and grazing cattle using a system dynamics approach for a semi-arid Australian rangeland system. We found that forage production and animal stocking rates were significantly affected by drought intensities and durations as well as by long-term climate trends. After a drought event, herd size recovery times ranged from years to decades in the absence of proactive restocking through animal purchases. Decreases in the annual precipitation means or increases in the interannual (year-to-year) and intra-annual (month-to-month) precipitation variability, all reduced herd sizes. The contribution of farming practices versus climate effect on herd dynamics varied depending on the herd characteristics considered. Climate contributed the most to the variance in stocking rates, followed by forage productivity levels and feeding supplementation practices (with or without urea and molasses). While intensification strategies and favourable climates increased long-term herd sizes, they also resulted in larger reductions in animal numbers during droughts and raised total enteric methane emissions. In the face of future climate trends, the grazing sector will need to increase its adaptability. Understanding which farming strategies can be beneficial, where, and when, as well as the enabling mechanisms required to implement them, will be critical for effectively improving rangelands and the livelihoods of pastoralists worldwide