The ways food is produced and consumed across the world is racking up hidden costs in health impacts and environmental damage amounting to some 12 per cent of world GDP a year, according to a new report Monday.
In the research, a consortium of scientists and economists found that transforming food systems across the world could prevent 174 million premature deaths, help the world meet its climate goals, and provide economic benefits of US$5 trillion to $10 trillion.
While intensive food production has helped to feed a global population that has doubled since the 1970s, the report found that this has come with a growing burden on people and the planet.
Poor diets lead to obesity or undernutrition and associated chronic illness, while polluting farming practices drive biodiversity loss.
“We have an amazing food system,” said Vera Songwe, an economist with the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and part of the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC), which produced the report.
“But it has done that with a lot of cost to the environment, to people’s health, and to the future and to our economics,” she said.
Researchers estimated total underappreciated costs from food systems of up to $15 trillion a year. That includes around $11 trillion each year from the loss in productivity caused by food-linked illnesses like diabetes, hypertension and cancer.
Environmental costs are estimated at $3 trillion from current agricultural land use and food production methods, which scientists say account for a third of planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.
‘Dramatic’ costs
The authors also compared computer modelling of the consequences by 2050 of continuing current trends and of a hypothetical food system transformation.
They said that on the current pathway, food systems alone will push global warming above the Paris Deal’s more ambitious threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times.
Heating could reach a catastrophic 2.7C by 2100, they said, while food production would be increasingly battered by climate change.
Obesity would also increase globally by 70 per cent, they said, while around 640 million people would still be underweight.
Imagining a better system, the report’s authors said more effective policies could improve diets, drastically reducing diet-related deaths due to chronic diseases, while transforming food systems into a source of carbon storage by 2040, helping the world stay within its climate goals.
But the report, which comes as farmers across parts of Europe stage protests over a variety of grievances including incomes and environmental regulations, acknowledged that change would be challenging.
The authors urged policymakers to compensate those left behind by a shift to a more sustainable system, noting that promoting healthier diets would have different priorities and focus in different parts of the world.
The authors urge policymakers to work to compensate those left behind by changes.
The report comes after the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization released research in November estimating that the hidden costs of food systems across the world were around $10 trillion a year, or nearly 10 per cent of GDP.
Johan Rockstrom, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the FSEC, said the fact that both groups had come up with a “very dramatic number”, exceeding $10 trillion, was reason to have confidence in the findings.
Food is one of those life essentials that we take for granted in Canada. As long as you have money there is more than enough to eat. If the whole truth were known we probably waste as much as we eat. Food availability and security in Canada is taken so much for granted the knowledge of how to grow, store and process food is not taught in our schools. We are missing out on a significant opportunity to strengthen and improve our society and ensure a brighter future for future generations. There are Canadian companies like Artic Acres who are building geodesic growing domes that are able to grow plants and trees all year long. These structures could be classrooms that future proof our people and our country. A life skills education that included food production would have benefits far beyond just knowing how to grow food.