Springmann and Freund, 2022

Agricultural subsidies are an important factor for influencing food production and therefore part of a food system that is seen as neither healthy nor sustainable. Here we analyse options for reforming agricultural subsidies in line with health and climate-change objectives on one side, and economic objectives on the other. Using an integrated modelling framework including economic, environmental, and health assessments, we find that on a global scale several reform options could lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in population health without reductions in economic welfare. Those include a repurposing of up to half of agricultural subsidies to support the production of foods with beneficial health and environmental characteristics, including fruits, vegetables, and other horticultural products, and combining such repurposing with a more equal distribution of subsidy payments globally. The findings suggest that reforming agricultural subsidy schemes based on health and climate-change objectives can be economically feasible and contribute to transitions towards healthy and sustainable food systems.

Notes

About two-thirds of all agricultural transfer payments worldwide come without any strings attached. Farmers can use them to grow what they like.
In practice, this means every fifth dollar is used to raise meat, and every tenth dollar to make dairy products
Farmers use another third of these payments to grow staple crops such as wheat and maize, and crops used for producing sugar and oil.
Less than a quarter of transfer payments are used to grow the kinds of foods that are good for human health and the environment
n one scenario, we made all subsidy payments to farms conditional on them producing healthy and sustainable foods. Farmers would still be free to grow other crops and foods, just not with the support of subsidies. We found that fruit and vegetable production would go up substantially – by about 20% in developed countries. This would translate into people eating half a portion of fruit and veg more per day. At the same time, meat and dairy production would go down by 2% – shaving off 2% from agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.