US food security and climate change: Agricultural futures

Agreement is developing among agricultural scientists on the emerging inability of agriculture to meet growing global food demands. Changes in trends of weather conditions projected by global climate models will challenge physiological limits of crops and exacerbate the global food challenge by 2050. These climate- and constraint-driven crop production challenges are interconnected within a complex global economy, where diverse factors add to price volatility and food scarcity. Our scenarios of the impact of climate change on food security through 2050 for internationally traded crops show that climate change does not threaten near-term US food security due to the availability of adaptation strategies. However, as climate continues to change beyond 2050 current adaptation measures will not be sufficient to meet growing food demand. Climate scenarios for higher-level carbon emissions exacerbate the food shortfall, although uncertainty in projections of future precipitation is a limitation to impact studies

Thinking big for smallholder agriculture: realizing agricultural potentials in changing times

Recent advances in approaches to quantitative strategic foresight have enabled new insights into understanding potential futures of the agriculture sector. Quantitative foresight approaches facilitate understanding of different plausible scenarios, especially as related to both endogenous and exogenous factors (e.g., global markets and climate change). These approaches tend to be macroeconomic in nature and resolve trends relative to coarse-grained drivers. In order translate these outputs into strategies that realistically benefit producers across scale, finer resolution and context specific understanding is needed. This paper offers perspective on how foresight analysis can be combined with more pointed assessment of the specific policies, institutions and market requirements needed create more inclusive agricultural investment strategies

Livestock, land and the environmental limits of animal source-food consumption

The increase in global consumption of animal source food (ASF) (by more than 40kg/person/year in the last 25 years) has driven livestock production systems in many countries towards intensification. This has significant consequences for land use. Identifying how best to navigate the trade-offs of using land for livestock production depends on understanding what is happening at a local level since there are large regional differences in trends for both supply and demand. Species and production system are also important determinants of land use, but it is the issue of providing sufficient feed for pigs and poultry and for dairy intensification that causes most concern. Producing traditional feeds (grains and soybean meal) competes with arable land used to produce human food. Thus research on increasing the efficient use of feed resources and on identifying new feed resources are both critical to achieve more sustainable livestock production systems, as is policy research on managing demand

A low-carbon and hunger-free future for Bangladesh: An ex- ante assessment of synergies and trade-offs in different transition pathways

Feeding and nourishing a growing global population in Bangladesh is a major challenge in a changing climate. A multi-level participatory scenario approach with corresponding modeling and decision support tools is developed and applied to support decision-makers in developing scenario-guided enabling policy for food security in the future under climate change. The results presented in this paper show how, under different scenarios, the agri-food system may transform in the next decade as a result of the interaction of intertwined institutional, technological, and market drivers in Bangladesh. For scenario building, the food and agriculture community was brought together with the climate and energy community. We also experimented with different ways to bring voices that are often less included in policymaking, such as poor rural communities and youth. The scenario quantification is performed by MAGNET, a GTAP-based multi-sector and multi-region computable general equilibrium model. The simulation results depict a comprehensive picture of corresponding and varied pressures on agricultural resources and opportunities for economic development and trade in Bangladesh. Finally, we did an ex-ante assessment of the trade-offs and synergies between zero-hunger- and zero-emission-related targets within the Bangladesh Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the developed scenarios

Beyond the food systems summit : linking recommendations to action—the true cost of food

A transformation of food systems is needed to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals specified in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recognizing the true costs and benefits of food production and consumption can help guide public policy decisions to effectively transform food systems in support of sustainable healthy diets. A new, expanded framework is presented that allows the quantification of costs and benefits in three domains: health, environmental, and social. The implications for policy makers are discussed.https://cdn.nutrition.orgam2024Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural DevelopmentSDG-02:Zero Hunge

Climate change impacts on agriculture in 2050 under a range of plausible socioeconomic and emissions scenarios

Previous studies have combined climate, crop and economic models to examine the impact of climate change on agricultural production and food security, but results have varied widely due to differences in models, scenarios and input data. Recent work has examined (and narrowed) these differences through systematic model intercomparison using a high-emissions pathway to highlight the differences. This paper extends that analysis to explore a range of plausible socioeconomic scenarios and emission pathways. Results from multiple climate and economic models are combined to examine the global and regional impacts of climate change on agricultural yields, area, production, consumption, prices and trade for coarse grains, rice, wheat, oilseeds and sugar crops to 2050. We find that climate impacts on global average yields, area, production and consumption are similar across shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP 1, 2 and 3, as we implement them based on population, income and productivity drivers), except when changes in trade policies are included. Impacts on trade and prices are higher for SSP 3 than SSP 2, and higher for SSP 2 than for SSP 1. Climate impacts for all variables are similar across low to moderate emissions pathways (RCP 4.5 and RCP 6.0), but increase for a higher emissions pathway (RCP 8.5). It is important to note that these global averages may hide regional variations. Projected reductions in agricultural yields due to climate change by 2050 are larger for some crops than those estimated for the past half century, but smaller than projected increases to 2050 due to rising demand and intrinsic productivity growth. Results illustrate the sensitivity of climate change impacts to differences in socioeconomic and emissions pathways. Yield impacts increase at high emissions levels and vary with changes in population, income and technology, but are reduced in all cases by endogenous changes in prices and other variables.University Corporation for Atmospheric Research 10.13039/100005626Peer Reviewe

COVID-19 pandemic lessons for agri-food systems innovation

The COVID-19 pandemic provides both a warning about agri-food systems’ (AFS) functioning and an accelerator for AFS innovation. It revealed both the increasing frequency of extreme events and structural shortcomings with respect to access to healthy diets, equitable livelihoods, resilience, and climate and environmental sustainability challenges that pervade AFS worldwide (Barrett et al 2020). Return to prior state is both unlikely and undesirable. The central question is how will AFSs transform in response to the pandemic and the conditions it revealed? The pandemic has shifted awareness and incentives in ways that have the capacity—but are not guaranteed—to prompt necessary, transformational AFS adaptation (Kates et al 2012, Bassett and Fogelman 2013). Will AFS transformation occur and, if so, who will benefit and who will bear the costs and risks? Drawing on a year-long global expert panel review (Barrett et al 2020) we summarize the evidence on AFS impacts of the pandemic and offer seven key lessons to guide adjustments to policies and practices.http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326am2022Consumer ScienceFood Scienc

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

The true cost of food : a preliminary sssessment

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.https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-15703-5hj2024Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural DevelopmentSDG-02:Zero Hunge