Can healthy diets be achieved worldwide in 2050 without farmland expansion?

Abstract

This paper analyses to what extent it would be possible to ensure food availability to the world population by 2050 with two objectives: healthy diets and no farmland expansion. Assumptions were made to project exogenous demand and supply variables. Climate change impacts on crop yields, grazing use intensities and maximum cultivable areas were taken into account. Cropland and pastureland needs were then estimated for 21 regions using a global biomass balance model. Simulation results established for two sets of crop yield projections (‘moderate’ versus ‘high’ growth) show that several regions (India, Rest of Asia, Near- and Middle-East countries and North Africa, as well as West Africa in the case of ‘moderate’ yield growth) would be constrained by their maximum cultivable areas with no deforestation. Our scenarios would be technically infeasible because of additional pastureland needs notably in sub-Saharan Africa. As a consequence, we analyse to what extent additional levers could reduce pastureland needs in sub-Saharan Africa.