Fixing food could produce trillions in annual benefits: report

The ways food is produced and consumed across the world is racking up hidden costs in health impacts and environmental damage amounting to some 12% of world GDP a year, according to a new report

The ways food is produced and consumed across the world is racking up hidden costs in health impacts and environmental damage amounting to some 12% of world GDP a year, according to a new report Monday.

In the research, a consortium of scientists and economists found that transforming food systems across the world could prevent 174 million premature deaths, help the world meet its climate goals, and provide economic benefits of $5 trillion to $10 trillion.

While intensive food production has helped to feed a global population that has doubled since the 1970s, the report found that this has come with a growing burden on people and the planet.

Poor diets lead to obesity or undernutrition and associated chronic illness, while polluting farming practices drive global warming and biodiversity loss, threatening potentially catastrophic climate impacts that would whiplash back on the world’s ability to produce food.

“We have an amazing food system,” said Vera Songwe, an economist with the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and part of the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC), which produced the report.

“But it has done that with a lot of cost to the environment, to people’s health, and to the future and to our economics,” she said.

Researchers estimated total underappreciated costs from food systems of up to $15 trillion a year. That includes around $11 trillion each year from the loss in productivity caused by food-linked illnesses like diabetes, hypertension and cancer.