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Healthier, more sustainable diets could reshape global agriculture: New study shows by how much
There is a clear need to shift toward healthier and more sustainable food systems. According to the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission Report, global adoption of a flexitarian Planetary Health Diet could prevent around 15 million premature adult deaths per year.
Today, food systems account for around one-third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and are the main driver of five planetary boundary transgressions. At the same time, one-third of all food is lost or wasted, while half of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture—mostly for livestock and animal feed.
To explore the potential impacts of a food system transformation, researchers used 10 global food system models to compare a business-as-usual scenario through 2050 with a transformation scenario characterized by healthy diets, improved agricultural productivity and halved food waste. The findings are published in the journal Nature.
Hermann Lotze-Campen, PIK research department head and co-author, said, "Our study shows that continuing on the current path is the more expensive option. Providing healthy diets for a growing global population by 2050 would maintain the overall value of agricultural production near 2020 levels while simultaneously reducing environmental and health costs compared with business as usual."
Transformation would reduce global agricultural land use by 9% compared with business as usual
In all models, the business-as-usual scenario leads to increased animal numbers, larger harvested areas, higher production levels and greater environmental impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen fertilization.
Under the transformation scenario, however, a larger share of agricultural products would be used directly for food and less for animal feed. The transformation scenario also projects less meat, dairy, cereal and sugar crop production; reduced animal numbers; less pressure on land resources; and lower production costs and producer prices in these sectors relative to business as usual.
Lead author Matt Gibson, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who coordinated the study while at Cornell University, said, "Across all the models we employed, a transformation could reduce global agricultural land use by 9% and livestock production value by 60% by 2050, relative to business as usual, with total agricultural output reduced by 17%, mostly from livestock changes.
"These reductions are partly offset by growth in other sectors, with the economic production value of vegetables, fruits, nuts and legumes projected to increase by a median of 23%."
Net CO₂ emissions from agriculture-related land-use change would decline by 76%
These production trajectories would have far-reaching implications for the political economy of global food systems. While adverse effects are often concentrated, for example, in livestock-oriented rural economies, the benefits for public health and the environment are more widely distributed.
In fact, net CO₂ emissions from agriculture-related land-use change would decline by 76% by 2050 under a transformation scenario, compared with business as usual, while direct non-CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production would fall by one-third.
"While the environmental and health opportunities are huge, managing structural challenges within the agricultural sector will require coherent food and agriculture policies and inclusive stakeholder dialogues," said PIK scientist Felicitas Beier, also a co-author of the study.
The authors conclude that the scale of change implied by a food system transformation calls for commensurate policy ambition and that bold decisions in the present can help support those who could be adversely affected by the transition while maximizing the benefits of a transformed food system.
Publication details
Matthew Gibson, Food systems transformation would reshape global agriculture, Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10775-2. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10775-2
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Citation: Healthier, more sustainable diets could reshape global agriculture: New study shows by how much (2026, July 15) retrieved 16 July 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-healthier-sustainable-diets-reshape-global.html
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