Abstract
This paper proposes an innovative framework to describe sustainable transitions of food systems while considering simultaneously socio-economic and environmental issues, in a just transition perspective. This framework (i) describes the structural changes needed for a sustainable transition in food systems; (ii) assess their effects on employment at the farm and processing industry level; (iii) detect the political levers needed to make this transition a just one—that is, preserving jobs and livelihoods for communities. Using the decarbonation pathway for the agricultural sector issued from the French National Low-Carbon Strategy as reference, we developed two scenarios for the French dairy sector which have the same level of climate ambitious, but a different approach to reach the target. Aiming exclusively to achieve a greenhouse gases reduction, the first scenario relies only on supply side measures. This scenario has a negative impact in terms of employment loss at the farm level and in the agri-food sector. In contrast, a multifunctional scenario considering simultaneously climate, biodiversity, health, and employment issues, and playing with policy measures targeting supply, demand and market organisation can maintain jobs in the farm and agri-food sector, contributes to restore the agro-biodiversity and develops food products compatible with healthy nutritional guidelines.
Highlights
The environmental impacts of the European food system are well established: they concern simultaneously biodiversity loss, soil degradation, greenhouse gases emissions and water bodies degradation [1,2]
Among all sectors covered by the SNBC, we focused on the analysis of the dairy sector for its importance for the French economy in terms of land use, employment and total value added generated
By applying our methodological framework to the dairy sector, we show that structural changes in the supply lead to moderate decrease in labour intensities that would be sufficient to offset the reduction in volumes of milk production hypothesized by the SNBC projections compared to the reference scenario
Summary
The environmental impacts of the European food system are well established: they concern simultaneously biodiversity loss (within and outside Europe), soil degradation, greenhouse gases emissions and water bodies degradation [1,2]. There is a strong scientific consensus regarding what needs to be done from a biophysical point of view, massive questions remain on how to make such a protein transition a just one—that is, while maintaining jobs and livelihoods for the concerned communities [9] This question is even more central in the EU since the livestock sector represents roughly a third of all direct employments of the agri-food industry (out of 4.5 million jobs) and 45% of the total agricultural activity [10]. Despite the ambitious announcement of the recently published Farm2Fork Strategy, part of the EU Green Deal, regarding the need to reduce the consumption of red and processed meat [13], there is still no single measure nor concrete targets or measures to reduce animal production in the EU [14] This situation stems—at least partly—from the lack of scientific approaches to apprehend—and tackle—the socio-economic implications of environmentally sustainable transitions.
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