Experts from the Oxford Martin School, which addresses major challenges facing the whole of humanity, have recommended taxing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from food production. They say this could save more than a billion tonnes of emissions and lead to half a million fewer deaths from chronic diseases.

In the UK, influential groups in the farming sector are fond of pointing out that there has been a reduction of 14% in GHG emissions from the industry since 1990. However, these reductions occurred before 2008, and largely as a result of indirect regulation, like clean water laws. In fact, emissions from agriculture have been fairly static for almost a decade, whilst other major polluting sectors like waste disposal and power generation have slashed their emissions dramatically.

Researchers from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of food, working with colleagues from Washington DC, conducted a global analysis to estimate the impacts of taxing food based on emissions. Their headline conclusion - that by 2020 one billion fewer tonnes of emissions would be released by food production (more than all the GHGs released by air travel the world over) - is focused on richer countries, where there are public health crises associated with unsustainable diets, and they tempered their recommendations with cautions that world leaders would need to give “due consideration” to making sure that any taxation policy didn’t affect poorer people’s ability to access nutritious food.

The area where the greatest effects of this policy would be felt is in meat and dairy production; researchers said that, if enacted, their taxation strategy would almost certainly lead to a reduction in consumption of animal products. Due to the comparatively high GHG emissions associated with production, the researchers estimated that beef would become 40% more expensive globally as a result of an emissions tax, whilst prices for milk and other meats would rise by around 20%, and the price of vegetable oils would also increase significantly (oilseeds like soy and palm of have been behind large-scale deforestation).

They also estimated that a reduction in animal products in the diets of rich westerners as a result of the taxation would lead to a significant drop in deaths associated with type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke and cancer, all of which are inked to dietary ill-health.

The researchers published their findings to coincide with the high-level COP22 climate talks being held in Marrakech this week.

Taxing unhealthy food could subsidise healthy diets

Commenting on the findings, Dr Marco Springmann, who led the study, said, “Emissions pricing of foods would generate a much needed contribution of the food system to reducing the impacts of global climate change. We hope that’s something policymakers gathering this week at the Marrakech climate conference will take note of.”

Dr Sprigmann also noted, “Food prices are a sensitive topic. We approached the design of climate policies for the food and agriculture system from a health perspective to find out whether the emissions of food production could be priced without putting peoples’ health at risk.”

The team looked at possible ways of spending the tax revenue, including compensating customers for higher food prices and promoting fruit and vegetable consumption using subsidies. Without such spending interventions, they said people in poorer countries, or less well-off groups within countries where inequality is rife, could suffer as a result of higher food prices.

Commenting on the overall conclusions, Dr Sprigmann said, “So far, food production and consumption have been excluded from climate policies, in part due to concerns about the potential impact on food security. Here we show that pricing foods according to their climate impacts could not only lead to lower emissions, but also to healthier diets in almost all countries around the world.”

Sustainable Food Trust challenges findings

The findings touch on recommendations first made several years ago, that food prices should be subject to ‘True Cost Accounting.’ The Sustainable Food Trust is a key advocate of the market-based ‘True-Cost’ approach which would make food producers responsible for public health and especially environmental costs (known as ‘externalities’) associated with certain methods of production, in an attempt to level the playing field make environmentally-friendly food production more viable and affordable for consumers.

However, although there are some strong parallels, the Sustainable Food Trust rejected the Oxford Martin researchers’ recommendations, warning that, if enacted, they could devastate sustainable farming systems by failing to distinguish between sustainable extensive livestock systems and more intensive ones. The trust’s senior commentators said this would leave only “highly intensive, indoors and grain-based” livestock operations in business.

Speaking to Farming Online on Tuesday, Richard Young, policy director of the Sustainable Food Trust, said he believes some of the underlying assumptions behind the study are mistaken. He commented, “In principle, the idea of taxing the negative impacts of food systems and recycling the funds to encourage more sustainable production methods and healthier food is good. However, such changes need to be based on accurate and complete data, which this is not, and the analysis needs to much broader than simply assessing the direct emissions. It should include soil degradation under continuous cropping and carbon storage and sequestration under grass, impacts on biodiversity, natural capital and a much wider range of human health issues.”

Young challenged the public health assumptions, noting that the reduction of beef and lamb consumption and increase in eating of chicken in the UK has coincided with increases in obesity and diabetes, and said the study presents a “Flawed proposal which would do serious damage to food security, the environment and human health, without even reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the way the authors envisage.”

He added, “The authors of the paper only make a distinction between livestock fed on grain and grass in terms of efficiency, yet there is mounting evidence to show that the meat from animals reared predominantly on grass (which most UK sheep and cattle are) has a vastly healthier fat composition than animals, like chickens, which are predominantly raised on grain.”