Food Matters: The Role of International (Marketing) Efforts in Addressing a Looming Climate Threat

Abstract

The global food system (i.e., production, transport, processing, packaging, storage, retail, consumption, loss, and waste of food) is responsible for 34% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2021). A significant proportion of these emissions (14.5%) are directly attributable to the production and consumption of meat (Stoll-Kleemann and Schmidt 2017) and the loss and waste of food (8%–10%, estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]). Many international organizations such as the IPCC or the European Commission (EC) thus agree that two effective demand-side ways to cut emissions from food are a collective shift toward more plant-based diets and global efforts to reduce food waste. Taken together, these two approaches could reduce the negative effects on global warming, such as a rise in temperatures, by an estimated 55%. Food preferences are largely determined by socioeconomic factors, cultural practices, and social norms (Steenkamp 2019; Stoll-Kleemann and Schmidt 2017) and thus differ greatly across countries (Godfray et al. 2018). Similarly, while roughly 30%–40% of all food is lost or wasted in both the developed and developing world, the underlying causes are very different due to variances in infrastructure, shopping practices, and knowledge of and investment in proper food storage (Godfray et al. 2010). As a result, there is great potential for international marketers and policy makers to contribute to a shift toward more sustainable diets and a reduction of food waste, for example, through the effective design of interventions and behavior change campaigns that take into consideration the specific conditions of these local markets. Research on the topic in the (international) marketing domain is scarce, however. A brief search in the relevant marketing journals (e.g., Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology), conducted in spring of 2023, identified eight articles on the topics of meat reduction, plant-based diets, and food waste, but no articles on these topics had been published in the Journal of International Marketing. Yet, understanding how changes in food consumption patterns can help buffer against the negative effects of climate change requires a global lens, as food systems are interlinked and the negative effects of food systems on climate change and vice versa disproportionately affect non-Western countries (e.g., due to more extreme shifts in climate). In this commentary, we thus call for more research that addresses demand-side GHG emission mitigation strategies related to food—that is, the reduction of meat consumption and food waste—from an international marketing perspective.