Recipe for a livable planet: achieving net zero emissions in the Agrifood system

The global agrifood system’s top priority is ensuring food and nutrition security for everyone,
but it also has an increasingly large role to play in protecting the planet. The Paris Agreement
on climate change explicitly states that “the fundamental priority” of the agrifood system
is “safeguarding food security and ending hunger” and to “foster climate resilience and
low greenhouse gas emissions.” Society also relies on the agrifood system to provide jobs
and development while protecting the environment and promoting human health (Willett
et al. 2019). However, conventional agriculture and food production often degrade soils and
natural ecosystems and contribute to deforestation, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification,
and air and water pollution (IPCC 2022c; UNCCD 2022). Likewise, common diets can
undermine nutrition and human development. It has also become increasingly clear that
the agrifood system is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
and the world’s worsening climate crisis. These conditions are set to deteriorate even further
as the world attempts to feed a global population that will grow by 2 billion by 2050. More
food means accelerating food production, land use changes, and related emissions, which
exacerbate global heating. In turn, global heating will affect future agricultural yields and
food security (Bajželj and Richards 2014). To compensate, food producers will intensify
activities even further, causing even higher GHG emissions in a vicious circle.

source :

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/406c71a3-c13f-49cd-8f3f-a071715858fb