Food & Climate
Studies predict significant food price increases every year in the coming decade. Food industry professionals are raising the alarm to food vulnerabilities unprecedented in scale and variety. In the long term, climate change could make growing food is impossible in one-third of current food production areas.
Sustainable food system researchers are now considering scenarios of significant food system stress and even collapse, British Academy Global Professor, Future of Food, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, Paul Behrens, wrote.
One study found that 40% of UK food experts think that civil unrest from food supply issues is possible within the next decade. This increases to 80% of experts when asked if it was possible over a 50-year timeline, according to Behrens’ article that seen by “Food & Climate” platform.
Without a rapid response, climate-driven increases in food prices could cause havoc in the global food system.
High-income nations are not safe, as grinding inflation can destabilise society, taking down governments and institutions. Given the febrile political atmosphere throughout the 2022-23 cost-of-living crisis, I would argue that some of these dynamics are already playing out.
A fork in the road
This trajectory of climate-driven food price hikes – leading to social unrest and political decay – is not inevitable. The scientific consensus shows that the biggest opportunity we have for reducing food’s environmental impacts across many countries is increasing the amount of plants we eat and reducing meat and dairy intake.
This could help us better deal with shocks. It’s likely such shifts would be better for related climate shocks such as flooding and storm surges.
Plant-rich diets are beneficial because eating plants is a far more efficient way of delivering the calories and nutrients we need for a healthy lifestyle than eating animals that are fed on plants.
My team and I found that a shift to plant-rich diets in the UK would free an area almost the size of Scotland. As climate change hits food production, some land currently producing animal feed could be used for human crops instead. There would still be plenty of land left which could – if sufficient policies are put in place – be used to meet biodiversity targets while improving access to nature for millions and improving mental health.
The plant-rich diet we investigated isn’t vegan. It’s not even vegetarian, although it does include a reasonable (and healthier) amount of meat and dairy. For example, it still includes a hamburger every fortnight.
Healthy diet with burgers
A healthy plant-rich diet still includes eating a burger once a fortnight.
This shift to plant-rich diets means the scale of the whole agricultural system becomes much smaller, giving more space to grow crops on saved land and deal with flood waters while saving money (plant-rich diets are generally cheaper to produce and buy than meat-heavy diets in high-income nations).
This shift could trigger a rural renaissance that supports farmers changing to different farming methods, enhances nature restoration and builds flood water protection. But this all needs joined-up action, including support from the government and demand from the public.
Working with nature would become a job many would leap at, including farmers. UK farmers consistently report concerns about mental health due to industry pressures. There is some evidence that livestock farmers face the largest mental health challenges, driven largely by how little time they can take off.
Giving options like more subsidy support for plant agriculture or nature restoration might be just the exit strategy many farmers need.
By transforming how we grow food and what we eat – rather than letting climate change dictate the pace of change – we have so much to gain. If you are a proponent for less but better meat, for increased crop diversity or organic food, then the answer is more plants in our diets. This extends beyond agriculture to anything that requires more land. If you promote timber buildings, biofuels, nature restoration, more housing, bioplastics or anything else that needs land, the answer is, again, more plants, according to “The Conversation”.