The vision: feeding 10 billion people nutritiously, equitably and sustainably
The world’s population is projected to grow from roughly 8 billion in 2024 to nearly 10 billion by 2050. The world needs to feed more people more nutritiously, while enhancing producers’ livelihoods and reducing inequities across the food system.
At the same time, the world needs to halt agricultural expansion into high-carbon, biodiverse ecosystems; protect water, soil and other natural resources; limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F); and improve agricultural resilience. Transforming the food and agriculture sector to address these challenges will require a combination of supply- and demand-side shifts.
How can we reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture to meet 1.5°C climate goals?
In 2023, agricultural production accounted for 11% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. When including food-related emissions associated with land-use change and other sectors across the supply chain, food system emissions total roughly one-third of global emissions. Even if fossil fuel emissions are successfully phased out, food-related emissions alone are projected to exceed goals to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) without changes to how food is produced and consumed.
Agricultural production emissions are primarily of methane and nitrous oxide, largely coming from enteric fermentation, manure management, rice cultivation and fertilizer application. Although agricultural emissions need to be greatly reduced to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal, they do not need to fall to zero by 2050. Modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), for example, show these GHG emissions declining to between 3.1 and 6.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCo2e) per year by mid-century, depending on emissions reductions achieved in other sectors. These reductions need to be accompanied by large-scale protection and restoration of carbon-rich ecosystems.
Global demand for food and other agricultural products is projected to continue growing. This means that the emissions intensity of agricultural production, or the GHG emissions per unit of output, needs to fall even faster than absolute emissions. To limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), GHG emissions intensity of agricultural production must decrease by 36% by 2030 relative to 2017, from 730 to 500 gCO2e per 1,000 kcal. Achieving this will require changes to both production and consumption, including through sustainably improving yields; reducing emissions from livestock, rice and fertilizers; reducing food loss and waste; shifting diets; and decreasing use of crop-based biofuels. However, recent trends show progress is well off track — the global GHG emissions intensity declined by only 5% between 2017 and 2022. Efforts would need to accelerate by 5x to meet the 2030 target.
How can we halt ecosystem and biodiversity loss from agriculture?
Agriculture is the largest user of productive land globally, covering nearly 5 billion hectares. About two-thirds of this land is pastureland, while the remaining one-third is used for growing crops. Based on the most recent estimates, agricultural expansion has driven an estimated 90% of tropical deforestation and nearly 50% of mangrove losses (including aquaculture production), and also threatens other high-carbon, biodiverse ecosystems such as peatlands and grasslands. Deforestation and other land-use changes, in turn, are the leading driver of terrestrial biodiversity loss. Thousands of species of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, plants and other wildlife are at risk of extinction, despite the critical benefits and services they provide to humanity.
Agrobiodiversity — the diversity and variability of living organisms among the species contributing to food and agriculture — is also critical to the resilience and sustainability of food systems. The loss of genetic diversity reduces the pool of potentially beneficial traits, such as resistance to drought or pests, that could help crops and livestock adapt to changing environmental conditions. Without this diversity, food systems are more vulnerable to increasingly frequent and more severe environmental stresses, threatening producer livelihoods, food security and resilience to climate change. Yet across 80 countries analyzed in 2020, the mean agrobiodiversity status score was just 56 out of 100, highlighting the need to protect and restore agrobiodiversity in agricultural production, food consumption and conservation.
Agrobiodiversity loss stems from a complex interplay of factors. Agricultural intensification has led to a focus on high-yielding monocultures, exacerbated by market demands for standardized products and globalization. Modern farming practices have often replaced diversified systems that maintain higher agrobiodiversity, soil quality, water-holding capacity and other ecosystem services. While pesticides and fertilizers can enhance crop yields, excessive or suboptimal application pollutes water and air and harms non-target species such as pollinators. Climate change and environmental degradation lead to further loss by altering crop suitability and threatening wild relatives that are crucial for future improvements.
Implementing practices to enhance on-farm biodiversity requires careful consideration to balance short-term yield risks with long-term climate resilience. Although some practices may reduce yields initially, avoiding them could increase vulnerability to climate shocks, potentially decreasing productivity over time. At the same time, potential decreases in yield could lead to additional agricultural expansion and thus more terrestrial biodiversity loss off-farm at a time when deforestation and other ecosystem conversion for agriculture needs to halt as soon as possible. Some practices, such as implementing agroforestry systems and maintaining diverse crop rotations, may enhance both productivity and biodiversity in some contexts. Prioritizing tailored strategies to achieve co-benefits for yields and ecosystem biodiversity, while phasing out those with strict trade-offs, can help create more resilient agricultural systems.
How can we enhance food security, health and livelihoods?
The livelihoods of 3.8 billion people worldwide are linked to agri-food systems. Without sufficient climate mitigation and adaptation, the agriculture sector and the livelihoods that depend on it are increasingly vulnerable to extreme events and climate shocks. At the same time, measures to mitigate agricultural emissions and biodiversity loss should be designed and implemented in ways to optimize benefits and reduce risks for producers, especially smallholders and family farmers. Changes to agricultural production must safeguard farmer livelihoods by ensuring equitable access to climate-resilient technologies, diversified income sources and incentives that value sustainable farming solutions.
Meanwhile, 29% of the world’s population does not have consistent access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food, disproportionately in low-income countries. Key indicators of malnutrition also remain stubbornly high. Efforts to make agricultural production and food consumption more sustainable must coincide with broader interventions to alleviate food and nutrition insecurity. While immediate efforts are needed to improve food access and distribution today, the challenges of achieving food and nutrition security may be further exacerbated by growing food demands and the projected declines in agricultural productivity, fishery outputs, and nutritional density due to climate change.
Lastly, changes to food production and consumption must be paired with broader efforts to address poverty, gender disparities, access to health and social services and political instabilities.
How to build a sustainable and equitable food system by 2050
Achieving climate, biodiversity and equity goals across the food and agricultural system requires simultaneously improving food production practices, reducing food loss and waste, and shifting diets. As shown in the figure below, the combination of these three shifts can bring projected 2050 emissions from agricultural production and associated land-use changes in line with a 1.5 degree C pathway, while feeding a growing global population.
1. Increasing food production sustainably without expanding agricultural land
The world needs to produce more food on existing agricultural land to meet growing food demands without furthering ecosystem conversion and degradation (which, in turn, also impacts biodiversity loss). This requires increasing agricultural productivity, especially where yields are low and yield gaps are large, while increasing sustainable agricultural practices such as minimizing on-farm emissions and biodiversity losses caused by the overuse of pesticides and fertilizers in some locations. More diversified farming systems and dietary patterns can also enhance climate resilience, on-farm biodiversity and nutritional outcomes. To mitigate trade-offs, practices to improve productivity must be balanced with those that achieve more appropriate input use, improve soil health and re-establish habitat diversity.
2. Cutting global food loss and waste by 50%
Food loss and waste occur across the supply chain, with a total of one-third of all food produced going uneaten each year. Reducing global food loss and waste can make more food available while also decreasing biodiversity losses and emissions from producing uneaten foods. As global rates of food loss and food waste are not yet moving in the right direction, a course correction is needed to meet global goals to halve food loss and waste by 2030 as part of broader efforts to create sustainable food systems.
3. Shifting toward healthier and more sustainable diets
Throughout these efforts, it is necessary to ensure equitable access to and the adoption of healthier and more sustainable diets. Sustainable food consumption will entail advancing global nutrition, improving food security in low-income and under-consuming populations, and moderating consumption of emissions- and land- intensive foods like beef among high-consuming populations. Across all regions, consumption of a diversity of plant-based foods needs to increase, alongside balancing under- and over-consumption, to improve nutrition and health.
Integrating food system changes with broader climate solutions
These shifts need to happen in parallel with those from other systems. For example, as a result of sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and achieving dietary shifts, land that otherwise would have been used for agriculture could be restored to nature, benefiting biodiversity and the climate. Increasing energy efficiency and electricity decarbonization can reduce emissions from fertilizer production, transportation of agricultural products and food processing and preparation. Additionally, optimizing water and fertilizer use efficiencies and improving the sustainability of aquaculture production can help protect freshwater and marine ecosystems.
Accelerating these shifts over the next three decades can help transform the global food system by 2050 to equitably and nutritiously feed 10 billion people with fewer GHG emissions and biodiversity losses.