Keith Wiebe

Healthier diets: A global economic modelling study of income and employment impacts across regions

Interest has grown in how to achieve healthy, sustainable, and affordable human diets. The potential income and employment effects of a transition towards healthier diets have received much less attention. We simulate aggregate and sectoral income and employment for business-as-usual and healthier diets for all geographic regions up to 2050 using scenario-based modelling. These healthier diets can increase food’s share of household expenditure in some regions, for example from 18% to 25% in East and Central Africa in 2050. Our results suggest that a global shift towards healthier diets leads to a reallocation of primary factors of production, especially low-skilled labour and capital, from non-agricultural sectors to crop agriculture in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Notably, in 2050, with healthier diets, agriculture’s share of low-skilled labour increases by 3.2 percentage points in East and Central Africa and 1.5 percentage points in South Asia excluding India. Although Gross Domestic Product increases in these regions relative to business-as-usual, this reallocation raises agriculture’s share of Gross Domestic Product, consistent with a slower pace of long-run structural transformation. The reallocation leads to a mild increase in wages for low-skilled workers relative to high-skilled workers in most of these regions, compared to business-as-usual. However, in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food price increases outweigh wage gains for low-skilled labour, reducing real purchasing power. Policies that encourage healthier diets may also alter income and employment and reduce economic welfare of poor populations in some regions, so care is needed in policy design to avoid adverse unintended consequences.

A crop disease without borders: Why wheat stem rust threatens your food security

Assessing potential environmental and socioeconomic consequences of a food system transformation. An overview of economic modelling supporting the second EAT-Lancet commission

The first EAT-Lancet report proposed a great food system transformation composed of a shift to a healthy diet, increased agricultural productivity and reductions in food loss and waste. This study highlighted the potential of such a food system transformation to move towards greater environmental sustainability. However, questions were raised about the health and nutritional adequacy of the recommended diet as well as the socioeconomic and justice implications of such a food system transformation. In response to these questions the modelling in the second EAT-Lancet report looked to explore a broader range of socioeconomic and justice implications of a food system transformation. To do this the modelling efforts in the second commission were expanded to include a multi-model ensemble composed of 10 global economic models. This ensemble ran a series of scenarios to assess the potential impacts of the original 3 EAT-Lancet transformation drivers (dietary change, reduced food loss and waste, and increased agricultural productivity), as well as a new driver of ambitious climate mitigation, with the objective of identifying potential complementarities and trade-offs between the drivers of change. This paper presents the ensemble approach and summarizes key modeling results from this effort, which are broadly consistent with results from the first EAT-Lancet report. However, the application of economic models suggests that there may be greater challenges in achieving all environmental objectives (e.g., nitrogen and phosphorous) without additional measures. This class of models also facilitated an assessment of potential price and food affordability consequences of a global shift to a healthy diet. This paper will explore these findings and highlight where there is greater agreement across the model, as well as note where substantial model uncertainty remains. focus on identifying where the models are in greater agreement and where substantial model uncertainty remains.