Abstract
The global food system inextricably connects human health and environmental integrity. It holds the transformative capability to significantly reduce levels of environmental degradation, caused by current food production practices, and alleviate the ‘triple burden’ of malnutrition, existing due to food consumption patterns. System-wide transitions are therefore paramount to tackling environmental and nutritional challenges that are exacerbated by a rapidly growing population. This work presents a novel application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to study the sustainability of food supply patterns around the world and appraise the potential to lower environmental pressure without compromising the supply of calories and nutritional quality. By relating environmental impacts to caloric availability and nutritional adequacy, DEA computes a relative performance score for 139 countries and identifies only 18 countries with per capita food supplies that are ‘efficient’ in transforming five environmental inputs (land use, greenhouse gas emissions, acidification potential, eutrophication potential and freshwater withdrawals) into calories and nutrition. The widespread extent of ‘inefficiency’ stresses that the significant opportunity and need to reduce environmental impacts from food is truly global and extensive. Results of this analysis also provide quantitative information on the varying degrees of potential to improve the ways in which each nation's population is fed and therefore offers country-specific insight for decision-makers into the integration of environmental and nutritional outcomes for sustainable development.
Highlights
Within the global food system, there are multiple challenges that pose risks to future food security which are intricately linked across environmental and human health (Van Vuuren et al, 2019)
Projected environmental impact reductions are analysed by income classification grouping in order to build on the stark patterns that have been identified within efficiency scores and income
To attain Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) projected levels and/or to operate within the food system's share within the Planetary Boundaries (PB) framework, reductions in environmental impacts of food may be achieved through targeted supply- and/or demand-side measures that mainly focus on mitigating impacts of agricultural production
Summary
Within the global food system, there are multiple challenges that pose risks to future food security which are intricately linked across environmental and human health (Van Vuuren et al, 2019). Current practices through the entire food supply chain, from farm to table, are responsible for significant contributions to environmental degradation (Springmann et al, 2018a; Willett et al, 2019). Crop and pastureland occupy approximately 40% of desert- and ice-free land (Foley et al, 2005) and consequent land-use conversion and expansion threaten biodiversity levels (Tilman et al., 2017). At the other end of the supply chain, food distribution and consumption patterns are failing to ensure that the world population is fed adequately and nutritiously. The poor quality of many diets around the world has led to the prevalence of three types of malnutrition – around 688 million people are undernourished (FAO, 2020), approximately 2.1 billion people are overweight or obese
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