Food system impacts on biodiversity loss

Three levers for food system transformation in support of nature

Research paper Updated 29 March 2021 Published 3 February 2021 ISBN: 978 1 78413 433 4

Image of farmer in field in Cotabato Province, the Philippines

Professor Tim Benton

Distinguished Fellow, Environment and Society Centre

Carling Bieg

PhD candidate, University of Guelph

Dr Helen Harwatt

Senior Research Fellow, Environment and Society Centre

Roshan Pudasaini

PhD student and Arrell Food Institute Scholar, University of Guelph

Laura Wellesley

Senior Research Fellow, Environment and Society Centre

This paper explores the role of the global food system as the principal driver of accelerating biodiversity loss. It explains how food production is degrading or destroying natural habitats and contributing to species extinction. The paper outlines the challenges and trade-offs involved in redesigning food systems to restore biodiversity and/or prevent further biodiversity loss, and presents recommendations for action.

The paper introduces three ‘levers’ for reducing pressures on land and creating a more sustainable food system. The first is to change dietary patterns to reduce food demand and encourage more plant-based diets. The second is to protect and set aside land for nature, whether through re-establishing native ecosystems on spared farmland or integrating pockets of natural habitat into farmland. The third is to shift to more sustainable farming. All three levers will be needed for food system redesign to succeed.

Our recommendations for action are based around a series of major summits and conferences on food systems, climate, biological diversity, nutrition and related areas scheduled in 2021. These offer a unique opportunity for a ‘food systems approach’ to become embedded in international policy processes.

02 How today’s food system drives biodiversity loss

The ‘cheaper food paradigm’ has driven the expansion of agricultural land and intensive farming. Failure to account for the environmental cost of food production has led to habitat destruction and pollution, driving wildlife loss.

The role of our food system as the principal driver of biodiversity loss has been shaped by decades of economic growth that has in part been supported by, and in part incentivizes, increased food production. This trend also reflects a lack of consideration of the true costs of food production. The drive for increased productivity, and failure to account for the impacts of food production on natural ecosystems and human health, have created and sustained vicious circles that make up what we describe as the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm.

2.1 Vicious circles in our food system

Investment in agricultural productivity, coupled with increased economic competition through the liberalization of trade, has long been considered central to a functioning food system (Box 1). For many, food production is a natural and necessary use of land: people need food, and they depend on the use of land to produce it. Similarly, efforts to reduce food prices are often deemed both desirable and necessary: lower food prices deliver two nominal public goods, in the form of increased access to food (and therefore greater food security, locally and globally) and reduced household expenditure on food (which in turn frees up income for spending on other goods and services, driving consumption, job creation and economic growth).

These key tenets – that we must produce more food and do so at lower cost if we are to support the global population and drive economic growth – have taken primacy over the goals of delivering human and planetary health and well-being, with increasingly problematic side-effects. While it is possible to boost economic growth through productivity improvements, this has typically relied on ‘externalizing’ the costs of such improvements on to the environment. In other words, the costs of environmental degradation resulting from food production have not been accounted for and included in the cost of food. Financial incentives such as agricultural subsidies are channelled into the food system to increase yields, and the resulting environmental costs – such as pollution through unsustainable production practices – are discounted or ignored by the market.

As mentioned, reducing food prices through increased productivity can stimulate growth in consumer spending, since it increases the amount of disposable income available to buy other goods and services. It also allows consumers to buy more food. Either way, this leads to negative consequences from a planetary health viewpoint: the more disposable income we have, the more we can purchase; the more we can purchase, the more we consume; the more we consume, the more resources we exploit; and the more resources we exploit, the more we drive environmental degradation and disrupt natural ecosystems.

Box 1. Defining a ‘food system’

The term ‘food system’ encompasses the entirety of the production, transport, manufacturing, retailing, consumption and waste of food. It also includes impacts on nutrition, human health and well-being, and the environment. Food security is a function of variations in the food system in any given location, and is influenced by a range of sociopolitical factors affecting price, availability and access. While there is an overall global food system (encompassing the totality of production and consumption), there are also many subsystems within it. Each location’s individual food system is unique, and is defined by that location’s mix of food produced locally, nationally, regionally or globally.

For each product consumed there is a supply chain, which describes the way food and its ingredients get to consumers. The term value chain describes the mechanisms through which the value of a product is increased by transport, processing and packaging along the supply chain. The term ‘food system’ includes all supply chains (and, implicitly, value chains) as well as their impacts on the environment and people. Food systems inherently incorporate feedback, leading to direct and indirect effects; in turn, this can create feedback loops wherein the system responds in unexpected ways to small changes in the forces acting on it. Food systems are therefore dynamically changing systems; thinking only about supply chains and value chains, for instance, is unhelpful both analytically and for policymaking, as it avoids consideration of wider system dynamics.

All activities within a food system – whether production, processing, retail or cooking – have impacts on the environment. For example, land under agriculture is disturbed from its natural state, which affects soils, water, biodiversity and even local microclimates. Processing, transport and retail require energy, water, infrastructure (e.g. roads) and other inputs – e.g. packaging. Throughout, pollution comes from chemical usage and disposal (e.g. from fertilizers, pesticides, industrial processes and GHG emissions), as well as from the disposal of waste, including plastics and other packaging.

2.2 The ‘cheaper food’ paradigm

Underpinning the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm is a two-way relationship between supply and demand. On the one hand, demand can be seen to shape supply: as the so-called ‘nutrition transition’ around the world has shown, rising incomes tend to prompt greater consumption of resource-intensive foods such as animal products, vegetable oils and processed goods, and relatively lower consumption of staple grains. But demand for food – what we eat, how much we eat, and what we waste – is just as much shaped by its supply and price. The more we produce, the cheaper food becomes, and the more we consume. Demand therefore does not simply determine what food is grown and how. It can also be understood as a function of increased supply of cheaper food, and of the way food is processed, marketed and sold. Understanding this relationship between supply and demand is critical to understanding how the current food system drives biodiversity loss, and to identifying effective levers for moving towards a system that supports biodiversity protection and other components of planetary health.

The ‘cheaper food’ paradigm drives a set of overlapping and often self-reinforcing mechanisms, in which the ratcheting up of production and liberalization of global markets incentivize economic behaviour that creates negative outcomes for society and the environment.30 These mechanisms include the following (also see Figure 3):

A drive towards globally competitive markets incentivizes land use for food production at increasing intensity and scale, because the financial rewards are high. The global production system is based on comparative advantage, and thus specialization, with the result that global calorie production is concentrated around a limited set of commodity crops grown using highly intensive methods in a small number of breadbasket regions.31
Intensive farming has a range of negative consequences for the health and quality of soils, air, water sources and natural ecosystems. Partly, this arises from the use of inputs such as pesticides and nutrients, and partly it is a function of the prevalence of ‘monocultural landscapes’ in which there is little opportunity for nature. In turn, the loss of biodiversity and soil fertility leads to a need to intensify agriculture further.
The concentration and intensification of agriculture have driven down the cost of staples such as grains, which are now sufficiently cheap to be diverted from direct human consumption to farmed animals. This has led to growth in the global herd of farmed animals, with negative consequences for air and water quality and GHG emissions.32
Cheaper calories from staple crops have become increasingly abundant, while more nutritious crops have become more expensive and relatively less available. At the same time, the costs of producing and consuming meat have fallen. These trends have together led to a rapid change in global diets, including an increase in overconsumption of calories and underconsumption of nutrients that has resulted in a global ‘double burden’ of malnutrition.
As food prices have fallen, it has become increasingly economically rational to waste food.33 Waste is now occurring at scale along supply chains, creating additional sources of pollution and resulting in ‘leakage’ of the finite resources – including land, water and soil – involved in food production. The more prices fall, the more food we demand and the more we waste; and the more food we waste, the more we demand.
As per capita availability of food, including meat, has increased, GHG emissions from the food system (both direct emissions from food production and farmed animals, and indirect emissions from the conversion of natural ecosystems to cropland and pasture) have risen. The global food system now accounts for around 30 per cent of total anthropogenic emissions and is a key driver of climate change.34
Climate change is reducing crops’ yields and nutritional quality across many producing regions,35 thereby further increasing the pressure to intensify production or convert more land to agriculture.
As GHG emissions continue to rise, there is an increasing need to sequester carbon in the land as a means of mitigating climate change, including through bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation/reforestation.36 However, these strategies increase competition for land, further increasing incentives to intensify farming methods or expand agricultural production into new areas.

Figure 3. The ‘cheaper food’ paradigm

Box 2. The ‘cheaper food’ paradigm and food and nutrition security

Determining the ‘true cost’ of food, and the need to reflect this in food prices, is a contentious issue. ‘Internalizing’ the environmental and social costs of food production through measures such as a carbon tax is seen by many as regressive, threatening to disproportionately harm lower-income households and the poorest communities. Across low-, middle- and high-income countries alike, economic insecurity is closely linked to food insecurity. For this reason, proposals to move away from the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm could be viewed as counterproductive for food security.

In reality, the relationship between economic insecurity and food insecurity is more complicated. In high-income countries, and increasingly across the developing world, the cheapest foods are often those that are calorie-dense but nutritionally poor.37 Fresh whole fruits and vegetables tend to be more expensive and less readily available to those living in deprived communities, whether in advanced economies or low-income countries.38 Low prices for calorie-dense, nutritionally poor foods – the supply of which is incentivized by the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm – encourage low-income households to follow a nutritionally suboptimal diet. The result has been a rapid rise in the incidence of overweight and obesity alongside continued micronutrient deficiency (also known as ‘hidden hunger’).39 The twin burdens of malnutrition – undernutrition co-occurring with cheap calories driving obesity – are increasingly an issue for low-income countries as well as high-income ones.40

Low food prices are not invariably a negative outcome of the food system; indeed, in regions with high levels of household economic insecurity, including communities where subsistence farming has traditionally been a lifeline but no longer offers a viable livelihood, low food prices are critical to food and nutrition security. It is perfectly possible to imagine food systems that do not ‘externalize’ costs on to the environment, and where food prices are subsidized directly for the vulnerable. But food systems that ignore the costs to the environment, or the costs to human health and nutrition, merely encourage unhealthy diets lacking in nutrition while undermining the capacity of communities and natural ecosystems to produce sufficient and nutritious food over time. This creates a risk of increased food and nutrition insecurity in the longer term.

Accounting for the true cost of food is thus necessary if incentives in the system are to be realigned to promote environmental and human well-being. Where this results in higher food prices, complementary policies will be needed to mitigate the risk of income-driven food insecurity. These measures could include the payment of a mandatory fair wage, the provision of social safety nets to vulnerable households, and subsidies to support the consumption of healthy and sustainable foods.41

2.3 How the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm drives biodiversity loss

What an understanding of the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm illustrates is that it is not agriculture per se, nor any particular agricultural practice, that drives biodiversity loss; nor is it the inherent need to feed a growing number of people that does so. Instead, a combination of factors (see Figure 4) is responsible: the way in which food is produced and used; the types of food produced; the way in which supply, demand and price interact to drive agriculture; and the privileging of productivity growth over the sustainable use of finite resources. Our current food system is structured to drive demand, leading to biodiversity loss through (1) the continued conversion of natural or semi-natural ecosystems to managed ones, and (2) the use of unsustainable agricultural practices at farm level, landscape level and global level.42

Figure 4. The food system and its impacts on biodiversity

2.3.1 Land-use change as a driver of habitat loss

Agriculture is the single largest cause of land-use change and habitat destruction,43 accounting for 80 per cent of all land-use change globally.44 As land is converted to crop production for human consumption or farmed animal feed, or to clear land for farmed animals to graze, habitat is lost for wild animals, plants and other organisms such as fungi. The greatest loss of intact ecosystems in recent decades has occurred in the tropics, the world’s most biodiverse regions, primarily through the conversion of forests for the production of soy, cattle and palm oil. In just 20 years, from 1980 to 2000, 42 million hectares of tropical forest in Latin America were lost to cattle ranching, while 6 million hectares were lost to palm oil plantations in Southeast Asia.45

In some cases, the lost habitat is the only place where a particular species is adapted to live. In others, the lost habitat may not be a species’ exclusive home but is used at certain times of year or at certain stages in the life cycle. Either way, the loss of habitat threatens the population of the species in question. Some species, particularly the largest animals (known as ‘megafauna’), range across very large areas; habitat loss that causes fragmentation of home ranges can lead to a decline in species numbers if, for example, the animals must venture into unsuitable habitats or managed landscapes.

Land-use change from natural to managed habitats always creates a cost to biodiversity because crops or farmed animals dominate the space and use up resources, leaving less of both for wildlife. In addition to wildlife loss through competition for resources and habitat destruction, maintaining managed habitats can incur a direct loss of wildlife – for example, in cases where wild animals are killed in favour of protecting farmed animals from predation or disease.

2.3.2 Food production as a driver of biodiversity loss at multiple scales

Food production systems impact on biodiversity at multiple scales:46 from localized impacts on farms, to landscape-level and regional impacts, to impacts that are felt globally. There is no single ‘channel’ through which food production and agriculture drive biodiversity loss; instead, there are many and varied ways in which they alter ecosystems, disrupt the usual feeding, breeding or growing patterns of species, and destroy habitat.

In short, the impact of food production on biodiversity arises not from a single fault, but from the nature of the system as a whole (see Figure 4).

2.3.2.1 Impacts at farm and landscape scale

Agriculture by its nature creates monocultures – homogeneous areas covered by a single crop – which replace the heterogeneity of the natural environment. Most agriculture relies on inputs that have spillover effects beyond the farmed area itself. For example, pesticides kill not only identified ‘pests’ but other insects in the vicinity. Fertilizers pollute air and water across wide areas. Intensive, large-scale animal farming entails the raising of large herds on relatively small areas of land, creating volumes of manure that leak nutrients into soils and water courses at scales that become harmful. Ploughing disturbs the soil, liberating carbon into the atmosphere. It exposes soils to erosion by wind and water, damaging nearby water courses.

Homogenization of farmland undermines biodiversity at farm and landscape level in multiple ways. Many animals require different habitats at different times of the day or year (e.g. nesting habitat that is near foraging habitat). Habitat uniformity across space and time undermines the land’s ability to support diverse ecosystems and viable populations of species. As fields are amalgamated, non-cropped areas decrease in size and abundance, and there is less unmanaged habitat to serve as a site for wildlife to shelter, reproduce or forage. Greater use of inputs and increased homogenization reduce biodiversity, both above and below ground; these impacts spill over into rivers, lakes and oceans in multiple ways (see Chapter 5, ‘Technical annex’). Greater homogenization at farm and landscape level also increases agricultural vulnerability to crop losses from pests, disease and climate impacts, thereby contributing to greater use of precautionary measures such as chemical pesticides and genetic crop modifications.

The impacts of farming techniques on biodiversity depend on the scale and intensity at which they are practiced. Given that habitat uniformity is a key driver of biodiversity loss,47 farms with smaller fields are often associated with higher biodiversity. This is especially true for farms where different fields are managed for different crops or farmed animals. Many agro-ecological farming systems – such as organic farming – are inherently more diverse, relying on rotations and mixed farming. Looking at the different types of farms and farming systems, there is often an inverse association between farming yields and biodiversity.48 Greater yields typically arise from greater intensification: increased planting density, increased use of machinery, increased use of inputs (particularly synthetic ones), and increased specialization. In general, intensification reduces biodiversity. Some innovative agro-ecological approaches aim to maximize yields and minimize the impact on biodiversity. However, in general the yield–biodiversity relationship means that nature-friendly farming systems tend to be lower-yielding than intensive farming systems (a review of the data most available worldwide suggests that organic yields may be, on average, 75 per cent those of conventional intensive systems).49

2.3.2.2 Impacts at regional and global scale

The impacts of food production on biodiversity are not limited to farm and landscape scale. Through a number of channels, food production in one location can lead to negative outcomes for biodiversity in faraway locations.50 These impact channels can be grouped into three categories: physical channels, where pollutants from farms are carried long distances by air or along waterways; biological channels, where impacts on one species or population prompt changes in other species or populations; and market channels, where changes to agricultural practices in one location may, through market dynamics, drive biodiversity-damaging practices in other locations.

Physical impact channels

Synthetic fertilizers and manure are both sources of air pollution in the form of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonium (NH₃). NOx are important GHGs. They contribute to global climate change, and together NOx and NH₃ help create secondary particulate matter (PM), which contributes to poor air quality and smog. Poor air quality may not always directly affect biodiversity, but increased concentrations of nitrogen in the atmosphere can be deposited in rain, causing ecosystem changes as a result of nutrient enrichment, rendering soils more acidic and degrading the environment for many species.51 Indeed, some analysts have suggested that excess nitrogen deposition is the third-largest global threat to biodiversity after land-use change and climate change.52

In periods of rain, excess nutrients and sediment from poorly managed soils can wash into rivers. This run-off can be carried rapidly over long distances, accumulating to levels that yield drastic effects on biodiversity and the stability of distant ecosystems.53 Overloading waterways with nutrients – a process called ‘eutrophication’ – leads to the proliferation of algae which cover the water surface and essentially suffocate the aquatic or marine life beneath. Modifications to waterways to support agriculture, such as damming and channelization to aid irrigation, exacerbate these impacts. At the same time, irrigation through the abstraction of water from groundwater flows potentially threatens the viability of aquatic populations that depend on such flows.54

While land-use change, primarily for agriculture, has been the principal driver of biodiversity loss since pre-industrial times, climate change is becoming an increasingly important factor.

At the global level, food production contributes significantly to biodiversity loss by driving climate change. When taking into account the emissions associated with (1) agriculture, (2) land-use change for agriculture, and (3) the processing and transporting of food, the food system accounts for roughly 30 per cent of all anthropogenic emissions (Table 1).55 Animal agriculture contributes disproportionately to this total, accounting for 16.5 per cent of GHGs.56 It is also the biggest contributor to two of the three major sources of anthropogenic GHG emissions: methane (accounting for 44 per cent of emissions) and nitrous oxide (53 per cent of emissions).57

While land-use change, primarily for agriculture, has been the principal driver of biodiversity loss since pre-industrial times, climate change is becoming an increasingly important factor.58 Rising global temperatures are changing habitat suitability throughout the world, and prompting the movement of suitable habitats for particular species to different regions: towards the poles for many organisms; up elevation gradients in mountainous areas; or towards deeper waters for aquatic species.59 As the climate changes, and their habitat moves, species either move with it or risk extinction. As a result of species needing to track a changing climate, and owing to the fact that different groups of species move at different rates,60 climate change is rewiring entire ecosystems.61 Many species are now found in areas in which they were not previously present – creating new competition and conflict between species – while other species are disappearing. More broadly, climate change is prompting a series of perturbations to weather patterns and landscapes, undermining the functionality of ecosystems on which human societies depend.

Table 1. Average (2007–16) annual emissions of greenhouse gases from the food system

Source	Amount	Units
Total global anthropogenic GHGs	52.0 ± 4.5	GtCO₂e y-1
Agricultural land-use change	4.9 ± 2.5	GtCO₂ y-1
Methane from ruminant animals and soils	4.0 ± 1.2	GtCO₂e y-1
Nitrous oxide (fertilizer, manure)	2.2 ± 0.7	GtCO₂e y-1
Transport, manufacturing, cooking etc.	2.4–4.8	GtCO₂e y-1
Total global food system GHGs	15.0 (10.6–19.4)	GtCO₂e y-1
	28.9 (20.4–37.3)	% contribution to total GHGs

Source: IPCC (2019), ‘Summary for Policymakers’, Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, Shukla, P. R., Skea, J., Calvo Buendia, E., Masson-Delmotte, V., Pörtner, H.-O., Roberts, D. C., Zhai, P., Slade, R., Connors, S., van Diemen, R., Ferrat, M., Haughey, E., Luz, S., Neogi, S., Pathak, M., Petzold, J., Portugal Pereira, J., Vyas, P., Huntley, E., Kissick, K., Belkacemi, M. and Malley, J. (eds), Data from Table SPM1, https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/summary-for-policymakers.

Biological impact channels

Animal and plant populations are dynamic. Dispersal and migration mean that organisms often move considerable distances over their life cycles. The ecology of one place can therefore influence the ecology of other places through spillover effects due to the movement of individual organisms.

The presence of migratory birds in summer on farmland in the northern hemisphere, for example, can depend on their continued presence in their winter habitat in the southern hemisphere, and vice versa. In this way, damage to a species’ summer breeding grounds resulting from the loss of suitable habitat through, for example, overuse of herbicides may lead to population decline – and thus biodiversity loss – in its winter feeding grounds. Farming can also boost the populations of organisms that have negative impacts on local or native organisms, for example through the introduction of crop diseases which then spread away from their introductory sites to harm surrounding wildlife.

Biodiversity impacts may also be transmitted at a genetic level. Genetic pollution (known as ‘gene introgression’) can occur from crop plants into wild populations, and from non-native fish escaping from aquaculture farms and mating with wild relatives.62 In both examples, this alters the natural genetic composition of a given location or ecosystem.

Market impact channels

Globalized supply chains in a competitive marketplace have resulted in a system in which the food consumed in a given country is often sourced from a combination of local and overseas production. These market linkages mean that efforts to implement biodiversity-supporting agricultural practices in one location may generate varied impacts elsewhere in the world.

By way of example, if a country decides to conserve its own biodiversity by making its agricultural production more environmentally friendly, the cost of production in that country will typically increase relative to elsewhere (since the inputs and practices on which the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm depends will likely be reduced or avoided). Higher costs may drive down demand for the food in question produced in that country, but, if total demand stays the same, price signals through international market linkages will incentivize either greater use of inputs or the conversion of additional land somewhere else to compensate, and demand will be filled through trade. This potentially leads to a biodiversity ‘saving’ in one place, arising through environmentally friendly farming, but a biodiversity ‘cost’ in another, through intensification or land-use conversion, to meet demand for cheaper food via imports.63

Benton, T. G and Bailey, R. (2019), ‘The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency’, Global Sustainability, 2(e6), doi: 10.1017/sus.2019.3 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020); and McElwee, P., Turnout, E. Chiroleu-Assouline, M., Clapp, J., Isenhour, C., Jackson, T., Kelemen, E., Miller, D. C., Rusch, G., Spangenberg, J. H., Waldron, A., Baumgartner, R. J., Bleys, B., Howard, M., Mungatana, E., Ngo, H., Ring, I. and Ferreira dos Santos, R. (2020), ‘Ensuring a Post-COVID Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss’, One Earth, ISSN: 2590-3322, Vol: 3, Issue: 4, pp. 448–61, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.09.011 (accessed 6 Nov. 2020).

Foley, J. A., Ramankutty, N., Brauman, K. A., Cassidy, E. S., Gerber, J. S., Johnston, M., Mueller, N. D., O’Connell, C., Ray, D. K., West, P. C., Balzer, C., Bennett, E. M., Carpenter, S. R., Hill, J., Monfreda, C., Polasky, S., Rockström, J., Sheehan, J., Siebert, S., Tilman, D. and Zaks, D. P. M. (2011), ‘Solutions for a cultivated planet’, Nature, 478: pp. 337–42, doi: 10.1038/nature10452 (accessed 24 Jun. 2019).

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2019), Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, Shukla, P. R., Skea, J., Calvo Buendia, E., Masson-Delmotte, V., Pörtner, H.-O., Roberts, D. C., Zhai, P., Slade, R., Connors, S., van Diemen, R., Ferrat, M., Haughey, E., Luz, S., Neogi, S., Pathak, M., Petzold, J., Portugal Pereira, J., Vyas, P., Huntley, E., Kissick, K., Belkacemi, M. and Malley, J. (eds), https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2019/11/SRCCL-Full-Report-Compiled-191128.pdf (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Benton and Bailey (2019), ‘The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency’.

IPCC (2019), Climate Change and Land.

Ibid.

Drewnowski, A. (2018), ‘Nutrient density: addressing the challenge of obesity’, British Journal of Nutrition, 120(S1): pp. S8–S14, doi: 10.1017/S0007114517002240 (accessed 20 Sep. 2020); and Benton, T. (2016), ‘The many faces of food security’, International Affairs, 92(6): pp. 1505–15, doi: 10.1111/1468-2346.12755 (accessed 14 Sep. 2020).

Popkin, B. M. (2019), ‘Rural areas drive increases in global obesity’, Nature, 569: pp. 200–01, doi: 10.1038/d41596-019-01182-x (accessed 14 Sep. 2020); and Malik, V. S., Willett, W. C. and Hu, F. B. (2013), ‘Global obesity: trends, risk factors and policy implications’, Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 9: pp. 13–27, doi: 10.1038/nrendo.2012.199 (accessed 14 Sep. 2020).

Popkin, B. M. (2017), ‘Relationship between shifts in food system dynamics and acceleration of the global nutrition transition’, Nutrition Reviews, 75(2): pp. 73–82, doi: 10.1093/nutrit/nuw064 (accessed 20 Sep. 2020).

Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition (2020), Future Food Systems: For people, our planet, and prosperity, https://www.glopan.org/foresight2 (accessed 15 Oct. 2020).

Springmann, M., Mason D-Croz, D., Robinson, S., Wiebe, K., Godfray, C. J., Rayner, M. and Scarborough, P. (2017), ‘Mitigation potential and global health impacts from emissions pricing of food commodities’, Nature Climate Change, 7: pp. 69–74, doi: 10.1038/nclimate3155 (accessed 20 Sep. 2020).

Please see Chapter 5, ‘Technical annex’, for the detailed evidence which Section 2.3 summarizes.

Newbold, T., Hudson, L. N., Hill, S. L. L., Contu, S., Lysenko, I., Senior, R. A., Börger, L., Bennett, D. J., Choimes, A., Collen, B., Day, J., De Palma, A., Díaz, S., Echeverria-Londoño, S., Edgar, M. J., Feldman, A., Garon, M., Harrison, M. L. K., Alhusseini, T., Ingram, D. J., Itescu, Y., Kattge, J., Kemp, V., Kirkpatrick, L., Kleyer, M., Laginha Pinto Correia, D., Martin, C. D., Meiri, S., Novosolov, M., Pan, Y., Phillips, H. R. P., Purves, D. W., Robinson, A., Simpson, J., Tuck, S. L., Weiher, E., White, H. J., Ewers, R. M., Mace, G. M., Scharlemann, J. P. W. and Purvis, A. (2015), ‘Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity’, Nature, 520(7545): pp. 45–50, doi: 10.1038/nature14324 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Campbell, B. M., Beare, D. J., Bennett, E. M., Hall-Spencer, J. M., Ingram, J. S. I., Jaramillo, F., Ortiz, R., Ramankutty, N., Sayer, J. A. and Shindell, D. (2017), ‘Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries’, Ecology and Society, 22(4), doi: 10.5751/ES-09595-220408 (accessed 3 Nov. 2020).

IPBES (2019), Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

There is a significant bias in the availability of the literature towards higher-income-country farming systems. See discussion in Steward, P. R., Shackleford, G., Carvalheiro, L. G., Benton, T. G., Garibaldi, L. A. and Sait, S. M. (2014), ‘Pollination and biological control research: are we neglecting two billion smallholders’, Agriculture & Food Security, 3(5), doi: 10.1186/2048-7010-3-5 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Benton, T. G., Vickery, J. A. and Wilson, J. D. (2003), ‘Farmland biodiversity: is habitat heterogeneity the key?’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 18(4): pp. 182–88, doi: 10.1016/S0169-5347(03)00011-9 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Gabriel, D., Sait, S. M., Kunin, W. E. and Benton, T. G. (2013), ‘Food production vs. biodiversity: comparing organic and conventional agriculture’, Journal of applied ecology, 50(2): pp. 355–64, doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12035 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Seufert, V., Ramankutty, N. and Foley, J. A. (2012), ‘Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture’, Nature, 485: pp. 229–32, doi: 10.1038/nature11069 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

McCann, K. S., Cazelles, K., MacDougall, A. S., Fussmann, G. F., Bieg, C., Cristescu, M. E., Fryxell, J. M., Gellner, G., Lapointe, B. and Gonzalez, A. (2020), ‘Landscape modification and nutrient-driven instability at a distance’, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13644 (accessed 21 Nov. 2020); and Aufdenkampe, A. K., Mayorga, E., Raymond, P. A., Melack, J. M., Doney, S. C., Alin, S. R., Aalto, R. E. and Yoo, K. (2011), ‘Riverine coupling of biogeochemical cycles between land, oceans, and atmosphere’, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 9(1): pp. 53–60, doi: 10.1890/100014 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Dise, N. B., Ashmore, M., Belyazid, S., Bleeker, A., Bobbink, R., de Vries, W., Erisman, J. W., Spranger, T., Stevens, C. J. and van den Berg, L. (2011), ‘Nitrogen as a threat to European terrestrial biodiversity’, in The European nitrogen assessment: sources, effects and policy perspectives, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, doi: 10.1017/ CBO9780511976988.023 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Xiankai, L., Jiangming, M. and Shaofeng, D. (2008), ‘Effects of nitrogen deposition on forest biodiversity’, Acta Ecologica Sinica, 28(11): pp. 5532–48, doi: 10.1016/S1872-2032(09)60012-3 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020); and Payne, R. J., Dise, N. B., Field, C. D., Dore, A. J., Caporn, S. J. M. and Stevens, C. J. (2017), ‘Nitrogen deposition and plant biodiversity: past, present, and future’, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 15(8), doi: 10.1002/fee.1528 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Bennett, E. M., Carpenter, S. R. and Caraco, N. F. (2001), ‘Human Impact on Erodable Phosphorus and Eutrophication: A Global Perspective’, BioScience, 51(3): pp. 227–34, doi: 10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0227: hioepa]2.0.co;2 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020); and Diaz, R. J. and Rosenberg, R. (2008), ‘Spreading dead zones and  consequences for marine ecosystems’, Science, 321(5891): pp. 926–29, doi: 10.1126/science.1156401 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Rolls, R. J. and Bond, N. R. (2017), ‘Environmental and ecological effects of flow alteration in surface water ecosystems’, in Horne, A., Webb, J. A., Stewardson, M. J., Richter, B. and Acreman, M. (2017), Water for the Environment: From Policy and Science to Implementation and Management, Academic Press, pp. 65–82, doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-803907-6.00004-8 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

IPCC (2019), Climate Change and Land.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (2018), Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model, Version 2.0, Revision 5, July 2018.

Gerber, P. J., Steinfeld, H., Henderson, B., Mottet, A., Opio, C., Dijkman, J., Falcucci, A. and Tempio, G. (2013), Tackling climate change through livestock – A global assessment of emissions and mitigation opportunities, Rome: FAO.

Newbold et al. (2015), ‘Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity’; and IPBES (2019), Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Pecl et al. (2017), ‘Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being.’

Ibid.

Bartley, T. J., McCann, K. S., Bieg, C., Cazelles, K., Granados, M., Guzzo, M. M., MacDougall, A. S., Tunney, T. D. and McMeans, B. C. (2019), ‘Food web rewiring in a changing world’, Nature Ecology and Evolution, 3(3), 345–54, doi: 10.1038/s41559-018-0772-3 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Karlsson, S., Diserud, O. H., Fiske, P., Hindar, K. and Grant, S. (2016), ‘Widespread genetic introgression of escaped farmed Atlantic salmon in wild salmon populations’, ICES Journal of Marine Science, 73(10): pp. 2488–98, doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsw121 (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Dougill, A. J., Howlett, D. J. B., Fraser, E. D. G. and Benton, T. G. (2012), ‘The scale for managing production vs the scale required for ecosystem service production’, World Agriculture, http://www.world-agriculture.net/ article/the-scale-for-managing-production-vs-the-scale-required-for-ecosystem-service-production (accessed 2 Nov. 2020).

Previous chapter Next chapter

Food system impacts on biodiversity loss

Show authors

02 How today’s food system drives biodiversity loss

2.1 Vicious circles in our food system

Box 1. Defining a ‘food system’

2.2 The ‘cheaper food’ paradigm

Figure 3. The ‘cheaper food’ paradigm

Figure 3. The ‘cheaper food’ paradigm

Box 2. The ‘cheaper food’ paradigm and food and nutrition security

2.3 How the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm drives biodiversity loss

Figure 4. The food system and its impacts on biodiversity

Figure 4. The food system and its impacts on biodiversity

2.3.1 Land-use change as a driver of habitat loss

2.3.2 Food production as a driver of biodiversity loss at multiple scales

2.3.2.1 Impacts at farm and landscape scale

2.3.2.2 Impacts at regional and global scale

Physical impact channels

Table 1. Average (2007–16) annual emissions of greenhouse gases from the food system

Biological impact channels

Market impact channels