A new article published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature analyzes what would happen if the world were to heed calls for healthy diets based on more sustainable food systems.
The study finds that a full-scale shift toward healthier diets, combined with improved farm productivity and a halving of food waste, could reduce global agricultural land use by roughly 6% by 2050, an area the size of India, and lead to a 42% decline (US$630 billion) in global livestock production value. Such a reversal would be historically unprecedented and would mark one of the first sustained contractions of farmland in modern history, driven by the principle that a world that eats differently farms differently.
The study compares business-as-usual projections with a modeled “transformation” scenario based on dietary patterns similar to those recommended by the EAT-Lancet Commission: people eating far less red meat and more fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.
Matthew Gibson, lead author of the study, told the Cornell Chronicle that the scale of this change is huge and policy ambition must be commensurate with the challenge, requiring a coordinated push involving governments, industry and consumers. The dietary shift modeled in the study would ripple backward through the system, reducing demand for feed crops such as corn and soy, freeing up grazing land and gradually pivoting the agricultural economy away from livestock dominance.
Under the transformation scenario, production of ruminant meat could fall by a third in 2050 compared with 2020 and its economic value could decline by 70%, while fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes would expand both in acreage and importance, potentially accounting for the majority of agricultural production value by mid-century. Agricultural emissions would fall by about a third compared with current trajectories, largely driven by the decline in livestock, while water use and fertilizer application would also decrease compared with business-as-usual projections.
Mario Herrero Acosta, a co-author of the study, said that the transition would involve pain points and potential losses, requiring mechanisms to compensate and incentivize farmers and ranchers to make these changes. Under the modeled scenario, the global value of agricultural production would shrink by about one-quarter by 2050 compared with business as usual, with uneven regional impacts: for example, the United States could see livestock production value decrease by 73% while crop production value increases by 20%.
