Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

244 Chapter 10: Environment and Agriculture Topic Box 10.1  Food systems approach Food systems can be described as the complex web of activities surrounding the ways in which we grow, produce, process, trade, transport, consume and waste food, or, put simply, how we get our food from farm to fork. Food systems are central to our health and wellbeing, our livelihoods and economies, and our cultural and social values. Globally, food systems are major drivers of climate change, changes in land use, depletion of freshwater resources, and pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems (OECD, 2021). At the same time, our food systems are expected to supply a growing global population with safe, secure and nutritious food – global food demand in 2050 is expected to be 56% greater than it was in 2010 (van Dijk et al ., 2021). Consequently, global food system greenhouse gas emissions could exceed the entire global greenhouse gas budget for climate stabilisation by 2050 (Clark et al ., 2020). However, up to one-third of food produced is wasted and never consumed, while excessive and unbalanced food intake is a major cause of disease in industrialised countries. Meanwhile, 2.4 billion people were moderately to severely food insecure in 2022 (FAO, 2023). It is increasingly recognised that global food systems need urgent and profound transformation to become sustainable. While there is good progress being made in some areas, the rate of change is slow and needs to be accelerated (EEA, 2022). Global assessments clearly indicate that realising a sustainable food system will require integration of demand-side measures such as diet change, waste reduction and a reconfiguration of value chains to deliver the right types of food to where they are most needed (IPCC, 2019; Willett et al ., 2019; Fanzo et al ., 2021). Diet change could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by up to 8 Gt CO 2 eq/year, while reducing food and agricultural waste could lower emissions by a further 4.5 Gt CO 2 eq/year (IPCC, 2019). Taking Irish dietary intake as an example, dairy and meat products represent around 30% of energy intake and around 70% of dietary climate impact (Williams et al ., 2020). Globally, there is increasing recognition of the dual health and environmental benefits that could be realised by reducing the consumption of animal-derived foods across the industrialised countries that produce most of these foods. Recent Teagasc research has shown that a 25% reduction in the emissions associated with the current Irish diet could be achieved if healthy eating guidelines were observed. This would require reducing treat consumption by half, adding three extra portions of fruit and vegetables per day, and reducing the consumption of meat by one portion per day (Conway and McCarthy, 2023). As climate, biodiversity and health crises intensify, market and policy responses will be amplified but also constrained by biophysical realities such as available land areas and climate change impacts. Profound consequences for food systems and farmers are likely, yet they cannot be extrapolated from past trends. Reactive policymaking could leave the agri-food sector heavily exposed to big risks that undermine the social licence and green marketing on which it depends and simultaneously unprepared to exploit emerging opportunities. Forecasting the future has inherent uncertainties, but strategic foresight analyses can point to the major threats and opportunities associated with specific food system trajectories. For example, the increasing future costs of healthcare for an ageing population are likely to mean that widespread diet and lifestyle changes will become an economic imperative. Diet change in Ireland may not have a significant impact on animal production nationally, which is driven by exports, but a shift towards consuming more diverse, value-added national produce could support national farm diversification – maximising the social, environmental and health benefits. Similarly, reducing food waste could be driven by economic factors if the true costs of food production were borne by consumers. Foresight analyses of future food systems require constructive and open-minded engagement across a broad range of relevant stakeholders with contrasting perspectives. There is an urgent need for critical and constructive discussions on what ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’ will mean for Ireland’s agri-food sector in a changing global food system. Management of land systems is also critical to sustainability. Farmers own and/or manage about 67% of land in Ireland (DAFM and DECC, 2023). Agriculture, and in particular farmers’ actions, will be a key part of the solution to addressing the climate and biodiversity crises. Although there is a lot of uncertainty about precisely how an agriculture and land sector that is compatible with national objectives on climate neutrality, water quality and biodiversity will look, it is clear that the sector will need to change, and the direction of travel is sufficiently clear to inform initial action. Against this backdrop, an array of good programmes and initiatives in Ireland, e.g. Farming for Nature and BASE (Biodiversity, Agriculture, Soil, Environment) Ireland, have made some progress, and there are many positive environmental actions already being carried out on farms, but they have not yet delivered the scale and pace of change needed.