Book review: Two reports on agriculture, food and climate change

1. Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System. Sutton, William R., Alexander Lotsch, and Ashesh Prasann. 2024. World Bank, Washington.

2. The Hope Farm Statement

Book review by James Joughin

This month brings two important big picture reports on the food system and the climate emergency. One is on the UK, the other outlines a plan for the whole world. Ambitious stuff. They both bring the good news that, despite the daily drip drip of frightening and disempowering stories, all is by no means lost and indeed there are plausible pathways forward.  In a week where hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists were reported to be expecting global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels, causing catastrophic consequences for humanity, this is of course encouraging and we need to pay attention.

Recipe for a Livable Planet

The first report is ‘Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System’. Written by three distinguished World Bank Agriculture and Climate specialists and supported by the Bank’s Agriculture and Food Global Practice team and a veritable army of researchers, independent academics and supervisors, the Recipe for a Livable Planet tells us nearly everything we need to know about reducing emissions in the food sector worldwide. In 250 evidence-based and succinct pages, the report confirms that the agri-food system, from ‘field to fork’ as it is sometimes described, generates almost a third of GHG emissions, some 16 gigatons annually. This is about one-sixth more than all of the world’s heat and electricity emissions and it is currently projected to keep growing.

The report argues that the agri-food system is ‘a huge, untapped source of low-cost climate change action’,  where, with appropriate action, agri-food emissions could be halved by 2030, thereby putting the world on track for net zero emissions by 2050. This would require annual food system investments to increase by some 18 times above current levels, but would generate a return of $US 260 billion a year. Drawing on previous estimates, the authors reckon the benefits in health, economic, and environmental terms could be as much as $US 4.3 trillion by 2030, a 16-to-1 return on the investment.

A set of prescriptions for country level action is then sketched out. Three groups of economy are identified, according to their natural environment and income levels, essentially their capacity to pay.  

High Income Countries are advised to find ways to reflect environmental costs in the price of foods, such that demand is driven toward sustainable alternatives.  These countries must also establish mechanisms to help the developing world reduce their agri-food emissions through the provision of both improved technology and new climate finance.

Middle Income Countries, meanwhile, must slow down the conversion of forests to pasture, and take steps to cut methane in livestock and rice.

The emphasis for the third category, Low Income Countries, is to avoid getting locked into higher emission technologies and rather to go, with the support provided by the High Income Countries, straight to green technologies, essentially spearheading a new development model.

The report is convincingly thorough on all these arguments with terrific graphics, and it will be a great resource for all those involved in trying to turbocharge the climate conversation. The report may tell us quite a lot of what we already know but it does so in robust and convincing detail and is pleasingly accessible for the non-specialist.  It is certainly persuasive that we can have an agri-food system that is ‘secure and resilient to climate pressures while improving livelihoods and generating sources of employment’, if only we can unite around a ‘strategic and humane approach’.

But there’s the rub. If only. The Recipe for a Livable Planet is just as it says it is, a set of ingredients that, combined in the right way, could deliver the emission cuts needed affordably to transform the agri-food system. Indeed, the report tells you nearly everything you need to know about reducing emissions.

Unfortunately, there is one glaring omission. The politics. The ‘how’ actually to make it happen.  Like so many reports written by technocrats, the whole edifice relies on the assumption of the omniscient benevolent dictator waving his magic wand and making all the good ideas magically happen. 

It is a pity that the authors did not make use of work by their colleagues at the World Bank, on Navigating the Political Economy of Decarbonisation. That book, edited by Stephane Hallegatte and others, is reviewed on the Climate:Change website: here.

The Hope Farm Statement

Closer to home, we have the Hope Farm Statement, which pursues related recommendations, with the focus this time on the lamentable state of the food system here in the UK.

Published by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, and signed off by many of the great and good from the farming, business, civil society, research and food and agriculture sectors, the commendably short Hope Farm Statement argues that food and farming in the UK ‘are at a critical inflection point’.  It describes the ‘cheap food policy’ that prevailed after World War II, its successes but also the ‘significant societal and environmental costs … paid by us all’, and the wide-ranging predicament we find ourselves in now.  One would assume no one would argue about this although of course we know people do.

The signatories – Anna Taylor, Henry Dimbleby, the CEOs of the National Trust, the RSPB, the WWF and fourteen more (but notably not the NFU: are they not in favour of a sensible food policy? Were they asked and refused I wonder), argue that major change is necessary and that this must come in the form of strategically aligned policies and supportive regulation. They sketch out what this involves in a few concise paragraphs: in summary, the next government should:

1. Introduce legally binding national food system targets;

2. Increase public and private sector funding to support farmers with the transition to more sustainable practices;

3. Establish robust mandatory nutrition and sustainability standards for all public food procurement;

4. Put in place a multifunctional land use framework to support local decision-making that meets climate, health, nature, and food resilience goals;

5. Establish a regulatory framework that covers all sectors and ensures fair dealing between retailers and intermediaries and farmers;

6. Establish a common measurement framework which enables decision-makers to assess the impacts of their policies for climate, nature, health, and social capital.

You might assume no one would seriously argue about any of this either and so far the coverage from the usual suspects and provocateurs seems to have been next to zero.  They may be keeping their powder dry but this may not last.

Part of the politics is how to deal effectively with resistance. These reports have the evidence to back their argument, but the opposition largely avoids engaging with the evidence and their stance is often not even in good faith. This makes engagement difficult.

And this is just the beginning of the problem. The signatories will be well aware that, as the World Bank authors say, it is easy enough to call for ‘the government to act’ and to acknowledge that this requires ‘courageous leadership’ but they do not ask where this leadership is likely to come from in these divided times. There may be plenty of people willing to support a change in policy, but the politicians, even the ones who agree, are largely keeping their heads down. They know there is a substantial and loud minority willing to go to the barricades to stop this. There have been initiatives in the past - salt tax, sugar tax, smoking ban etc - but all have wilted once the media starts to get a sniff of blood.  How would the Daily Mail react if a Labour government enacted policies that would, as the World Bank suggests, ‘reflect environmental costs in the price of foods such that demand is driven toward sustainable alternatives’?

It is the very reluctance to acknowledge the politics of all this that enables the Hope Farm signatories to write that ‘the next UK Government should, as a matter of urgent national priority, starting in its first 100 days, implement a bold national food and farming strategy’. Maybe it is only intended as rhetoric but it is of course as likely as the survival chances of the proverbial snowball at 2.5C (or above). Henry Dimbleby knows this because he saw the National Food Strategy, his last effort to engage with the system, excellent as it was, crash and die.

The basic problem is that there is insufficient pressure from the population as a whole, and active resistance from well-funded interest groups currently supporting the status quo.  The Hope Farm Statement is a prescient, necessary document. It is a good statement of common sense and intent, a very workable starting place, but do not hold your breath as to anything happening in one hundred days.  It will be up to citizens, in all their many institutions, associations and other iterations (Climate:Change and all the others), to develop and build this pressure and then crank up the necessary momentum. 

James Joughin

James Joughin is the food policy lead for Climate:Change

Perspective pieces are the responsibility of the authors, and do not commit Climate:Change in any way. Guest posts are published to explore issues or stimulate debate. Comments are welcome.