2026/03/10 by Paul C West, James S Gerber, E. S. Cassidy +1 · 2 voices
Environmental Science · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact #Bioeconomy and Sustainability Development #Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/2976-601x/ae4f6b
Abstract To feed a growing population, it is essential that the global agri-food system be managed to efficiently convert crop production into calories for human consumption. Here, we quantify the impact of how 50 crops are used—for food, livestock feed, biofuels, and other non-food uses—on available calories from 2010 to 2020. We find that, although total calorie production increased by 23.9% from 2010 to 2020, the available calories in the food system for human consumption increased by only 16.6%. This decrease in efficiency was driven by increases in calories used for livestock feed (31.2%) and non-food uses (36.2%). Calories used for biofuel production, a subset of non-food uses, increased 27.9% and accounted for 5.3% of all calorie production in 2020. In comparison, crops consumed directly as food increased by only 14.9%. In 2020, half (50.1%) of calories produced on croplands were available for people to eat. The calories ‘lost’ to inefficiency of the food system (49.9%) is equivalent to 7.2 × 10 15 calories per year, enough to support 7.2 billion people. Beef production was the largest source of calories lost from converting feed to food, requiring 36.0% of all feed calories yet only producing 9.1% of animal source calories. If excess beef consumption were reduced to healthy quantities, as defined by the EAT-Lancet healthy reference diet, and substituted with chicken in forty-eight higher-income countries, the lost calories avoided would be enough to meet the caloric needs of 850 million people. The results presented here demonstrate that a few commodities, particularly beef and pork, are primarily responsible for the current inefficiencies in how croplands are used to produce food for human consumption. Further, these inefficiencies are concentrated in a small set of countries. Targeting actions and policies for these commodities and countries can have an outsized impact on improving food security, health, and the environment.