The Economics of Sustainable Food: Smart Policies for Health and the Planet

by Nicoletta Batini (editor)

Producing food industrially like we do today causes tremendous global economic losses in terms of malnutrition, diseases, and environmental degradation. But because the food industry does not bear those costs and the price tag for these losses does not show up at the grocery store, it is too often ignored by economists and policymakers.The Economics of Sustainable Food details the true cost of food for people and the planet. It illustrates how to transform our broken system, alleviating its severe financial and human burden. The key is smart macroeconomic policy that moves us toward methods that protect the environment like regenerative land and sea farming, low-impact urban farming, and alternative protein farming, and toward healthy diets. The book’s multidisciplinary team of authors lay out detailed fiscal and trade policies, as well as structural reforms, to achieve those goals.Chapters discuss strategies to make food production sustainable, nutritious, and fair, ranging from taxes and spending to education, labor market, health care, and pension reforms, alongside regulation in cases where market incentives are unlikely to work or to work fast enough. The authors carefully consider the different needs of more and less advanced economies, balancing economic development and sustainability goals. Case studies showcase successful strategies from around the world, such as taxing foods with a high carbon footprint, financing ecosystems mapping and conservation to meet scientific targets for healthy biomes permanency, subsidizing sustainable land and sea farming, reforming health systems to move away from sick care to preventive, nutrition-based care, and providing schools with matching funds to purchase local organic produce.In the years ahead, few issues will be more important for individual prosperity and the global economy than the way we produce our food and what food we eat. This roadmap for reform is an invaluable resource to help global policymakers improve countless lives.

Genres: Food, Sustainability, Science, Environment, Nonfiction, Economics

318 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 8, 2021

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the opportunity to watch the fascinating webinar Dr. Batini participated in about a month ago where this book was the main topic. I impulse-bought it directly as a result of that conversation, and it's probably one of the best decisions I've made!

Food systems are not only critical to addressing food insecurity, but they are also a key component in addressing climate change as well as income inequality -- two other issues I care a lot about. This book outlines, in great detail, the many contributing components & factors that comprise global food systems, and then provides what recommendations exist to reform and strengthen these components. I cannot recommend this book enough to people interested in climate change, malnutrition, or economics more generally.

One quote that has stuck with me: "Global food has a massive economic, social, and environmental footprint: It is the largest industry in the world, representing 10 percent of global consumer spending, 40 percent of employment, and between 21 and 37 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions -- emissions expected to rise to 50 percent of the total by 2050 as the demand for food increases alongside the world's population." (p. 45)