The European Green Deal improves the sustainability of food systems but has uneven economic impacts on consumers and farmers

Abstract

The European Green Deal aims notably to achieve a fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly food system in the European Union. We develop a partial equilibrium economic model to assess the market and non-market impacts of the three main levers of the Green Deal targeting the food chain: reducing the use of chemical inputs in agriculture, decreasing post-harvest losses, and shifting toward healthier average diets containing lower quantities of animal-based products. Substantially improving the climate, biodiversity, and nutrition performance of the European food system requires jointly using the three levers. This allows a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of food consumption and a 40–50% decrease in biodiversity damage. Consumers win economically thanks to lower food expenditures. Livestock producers lose through quantity and price declines. Impacts on revenues of food/feed field crop producers are positive only when the increase in food consumption products outweighs the decrease in feed consumption.

Reference

Hervé Guyomard, Louis-Georges Soler, Cécile Détang-Dessendre, and Vincent Réquillart, “The European Green Deal improves the sustainability of food systems but has uneven economic impacts on consumers and farmers”, Communications Earth and Environment, vol. 4, n. 358, October 2023.