Crop production is the most crucial primary agricultural production activity for food and nutrition security. In 2011, around 70% of the global calories intake per capita per day derived from plant-based products. Besides its importance for direct human consumption, crop production is also crucial for producing feed for livestock and, increasingly, also for aquaculture.
Our current dietary pattern has a strong impact on the environment. Global food production releases more than 25 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, pollutes terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and uses about 40 percent of the earth’s terrestrial surface.
Modelling healthy diets is not an easy task. To do this, you first have to define the required consumer-based dietary intake data. This is one of the objectives of the SUSFANS project in Work package 2. In focus of this Work package are four European countries, namely Denmark, Czech Republic, Italy and France.
Jacqueline Bloemhof is full professor and chair of the Operations Research and Logistics Group at Wageningen University. Her main field of research is sustainable supply chain management, both in forward chains (food and other agricultural distribution networks) and closed loop supply chains (recycling and recovery of products, parts, materials or energy). She published on these topics in a large number of articles in ISI journals in the field of Operations Research and Environmental Science, Engineering and Environmental Sciences.
In this deliverable we investigate consumers’ sensitivity to product information on fruit and vegetable products. Fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with better health and prevention of diseases (Guillaumie et al., 2012) and more knowledge is needed on how product information on fruit and vegetable products influences consumer choices. This study contributes to the existing literature by studying the combination of health and sustainability information. In light of dual process theories (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; HSM; Chaiken 1980) we took both message content and message characteristics into account.
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This deliverable embodies the Communication Plan and will report on Task 11.1. The communication plan includes a long list of the future users of the SUSFANS toolbox and first clusters of regions and target groups.
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We present a comprehensive modelling framework aimed at obtaining short-term forecasts (one to twelve months ahead) of commodity prices and apply it to short and medium run predictions of Arabica coffee, wheat, soybeans and corn. We entertain a large number of univariate and multivariate time series models, including specifications that exploit information about market fundamentals, macroeconomic and financial developments and climatic variables. A comprehensive set of forecast averaging tools is implemented to explicitly address model uncertainty. Our results indicate that variables measuring market fundamentals and macroeconomic developments (and to a lesser extent, financial developments) contain systematic predictive information for out-of-sample forecasting of commodity prices.
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Our current dietary pattern especially animal source food (ASF), has a strong impact on the environment. Furthermore, in Europe, daily consumption of ASF protein is above dietary recommendation, resulting in an increased risk of chronic non-communicable diseases.The aim of this deliverable was to identify innovations that together can result in a pathway towards sustainable nutrition security by combining production-side strategies (reducing the environmental impact per kg of ASF produced), consumption-side strategies (changing consumption patterns of humans by reducing or replacing ASF), and the circular strategie, (focus on improving the circularity of the food system, and avoiding feed-food competition, and lies in between the production and consumption-side strategies). The paper identifies a set of innovations that has the potential to deliver a pathway towards sustainble healthy diets. These innovations comprise: including insects in livestock and fish feed; reducing meat intake and replacing beef with other ASF products including fish, and including novel protein source e.g. in-vitro meat; a circular strategy centred around using products unfit for human consumption in livestock feed. Data is presented that supports the assessment of the impact of these innovation options on the contribution of ASF in a sustainable and healthy diet, using the SUSFANS toolbox. Similar to this the role of captured seafood - fishing at equilibrium (sustainable yields)- in a suitable diet will be assessed.
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Land use diversity and soil erosion are amongst the aggregated variables required for describing environmental sustainability in the domains ‘biodiversity’ and ‘natural resources’. Both aggregated variables need to be quantified at high spatial resolution. The CAPRI model is able to do this, but the calculation procedure required improvements. This report describes basic features of the methodology, scrutinizes deficiencies in the current implementation and identifies possibilities to update and improve the method.
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Crop production is the most crucial primary agricultural production activity for both food and nutrition security. Around 70% of the calories per capita and day come from plant-based products. The report provides a qualitative assessment of drivers of crop production and a quantitative analysis of crop yields in the EU. Crop yield trends are largely positive throughout the EU. Average efficiencies in yield exploitation are between 70 and 80% depending on the crop. Climate has mixed effects on crop yields and farm size, fertilizer and plant protection all clearly positively affect crop yields.
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The analysis of post-farmgate biomass streams is crucial for accurately quantifying the environmental impact associated with the food that we eat. It is also the pre-requisite for identifying opportunities to move into the direction of an agri-food system with low emissions and with closed nutrient circles. We identified a few areas where a full chain life-cycle assessment was not yet possible with the tools available: slaughterhouses, cereal processing, waste management systems and consumers. In this report we perform a literature review for each of these ‚pools‘ and compile data that can be used in ‚modules‘ that will be implemented for the SUSFANS toolbox. The assessment is based on – and further develops – the framework developed by the UN-ECE for the quantification of national nitrogen budgets.
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We analyse ex-ante the sustainability effects of diet recommendations in France, Denmark and Finland to conclude that: 1- The promotion of several diet recommendations would improve social welfare; 2- Healthy-eating recommendations targeting consumption of fruits/vegetables, salt and saturated fat should be prioritized for promotion; 3- Although synergies dominate, trade-offs between environmental and health objectives occur in some cases ; and 4- The taste/utility cost of dietary change imposed on consumers should be included in the welfare analysis of diet recommendations.
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How can we improve the food system in the EU, especially from the perspective of social, environmental and economic sustainability? How can we balance and encompass views on how to strengthen food and nutrition security in the EU?
These are the core questions of the SUSFANS project. SUSFANS’ overall goal is to come to a better food and nutrition system for human health, the environment and corporate enterprises in Europe.
© Copyright 2015. METRICS, MODELS AND FORESIGHT FOR EUROPEAN SUSTAINABLE FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY - SUSFANS
H2020-SFS-2014-2,
Grant 633692
