## farming-food-and-climate-change-batini

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### Hidden costs of food systems
- The agri-food sector now creates a quarter of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions—a share expected to increase to a half of all such emissions by 2050.
- Livestock account for around 15 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases each year.
- By 2030 the livestock sector alone could account for 37 percent of the emissions allowable to keep warming under the 2°C target, and 49 percent if the temperature goal is 1.5°C.
- The agri-food sector uses about half the world’s ice- and desert-free land and three-quarters of its fresh water.
- Current farming methods degrade soil more than 100 times faster than new soil is formed.
- With a third of all food produced going to the more than 70 billion animals farmed every year on land alone:
  - More than 820 million people worldwide went hungry in 2018.
  - 650 million people were classed as obese and about 2 billion as overweight.
- In 2018, total subsidies to agriculture in OECD member countries reached $233 billion, an amount comparable to Greece’s GDP.
- Currently a mere 1.2 percent of global agricultural land is farmed organically; expected to reach only 3.2 percent by 2024 under current policies.

### 1.5ºC target for food — supply-side changes required (the Great Food Transformation)
- Three supply-side changes identified as necessary:
  1. Global production and consumption of red meat (especially beef) and dairy will need to be cut by about 50 percent, through substitution of proteins supplied by plants; urgent action in the top three beef producers (United States, Brazil, European Union) and dairy producers (United States, India, China) is key.
  2. Large-scale shift away from conventional monoculture to practices that support biodiversity: organic and mixed crop-livestock farming, sustainable soil management, and ecosystem restoration.
     - Restoring soils with regenerative practices could lock up as much as 60 tons of carbon in soil and vegetation per acre.
     - Rattan Lal: “a mere 2 percent increase in the carbon content of the planet’s soils could offset 100 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.”
     - Regenerative ocean farming: ocean farming of seaweed and shellfish in an area equivalent to 5 percent of U.S. territorial waters can produce protein equivalent to 2.3 trillion hamburgers and sequester carbon equal to the output of 20 million cars.
     - Farming less than 10 percent of the oceans could absorb all carbon produced in a year globally and produce enough biofuel to power the world (Tim Flannery).
  3. Better land use, including planting forests and reducing deforestation; intact forests sequester twice as much carbon as planted monocultures.
     - Proposed Global Deal for Nature targets 30 percent of earth formally protected and an additional 20 percent designated as climate stabilization areas by 2030 to hold global temperature increases below 1.5°C.
- Demand-side dietary change:
  - Research published in Nature in 2018: the average world citizen should eat 50 percent less animal products; suggested rule “no animal products for breakfast or lunch.”
  - Predominantly plant-based diets reduce risks of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.

### Role of policy
- Redirect subsidies:
  - Subsidies for unsustainable farming should be redirected toward sustainable farms producing plant-based protein and toward incentives for innovation on alternative proteins and smart farming technologies.
  - In developing economies, replace production subsidies with ecological payments to sustainable farmers.
- Transitional assistance:
  - Provide direct loans, guarantee schemes, crop insurance, and measures to improve land and market access to help farmers transition to organic practice.
- Conservation and tenure:
  - Land tenure legislation and financial and labor market incentives to favor landowners who protect ecosystems.
  - Make adoption of on-farm conservation practices a condition for receiving farm subsidies.
  - International funds could compensate countries for forgoing trade in commodities that threaten critical ecosystems and to create or enforce marine conservation areas.
- Fiscal instruments and pricing:
  - Taxes levied on “unsustainable” and “unhealthy” foods—notably meat, dairy, and ultra-processed food—could discourage overconsumption and align consumption with nutritional recommendations.
  - Example estimates: average US retail price of a Big Mac is around $5.60; full burden on society is $12 per sandwich. A gallon of milk would run $9 instead of $3.50; a two-pound package of pork ribs would jump from $12 to $32.
  - Offsetting these taxes with lower taxes on sustainable foods would preserve consumer food purchasing power while achieving health and environmental gains and saving the United States tens of billions of dollars in net terms every year.
- Cut food waste:
  - Measures: better supply chain management, e-commerce platforms sharing real-time surplus/demand, smaller retail portions, greater use of frozen food, donation programs, educational campaigns, and reducing excess consumption.
- Finance and regulation:
  - Change prudential regulation to account for financial risks of institutions lending to nonsustainable agri-food firms.
  - Invest public funds in assets associated with sustainable land use and expand green and sustainable bond markets.
  - Public support needed for early warning systems for weather, crop yields, and seasonal climate events and for innovation in sustainability-enhancing agricultural technology.

### Extraordinary co-benefits and mitigation potential
- The IPCC’s 2019 report indicates that by 2050, reforms of crop and livestock activities and agroforestry could mitigate up to a third of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
- Dietary changes alone could lead to a reduction in emissions equal to the sum of the current annual carbon emissions of the United States and India.
- The elimination of food waste could cut another 8  10 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.
- Shifting production and consumption toward plant-based foods would halt deforestation and enable conservation of critical ecosystems.
- Human and economic co-benefits include: more nutritious, varied, safer, humanely raised, and more affordable food; longer and healthier lives; savings from lower health costs; higher labor productivity; progress on eradicating world hunger, income inequality, and social immobility; and reduced climate-driven migration.

*Nicoletta Batini, “Reaping What We Sow,” FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, December 2019.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2019/december/farming-food-and-climate-change-batini.pdf_