It is time to respect the planet’s boundaries—and overhaul how we eat and waste food—if we want to feed our rising population
(Credit: Ben White/Unsplash)

It is time to respect the planet’s boundaries—and overhaul how we eat and waste food—if we want to feed our rising population

If we're to feed the estimated 10 billion people on Earth in 2050—and protect the planet— we have to completely overhaul food production and choose healthier diets, says international report

The way we eat and grow food has to dramatically change if we're going to feed the world's increasing population by 2050 and protect the planet, according to a major report released today from the EAT-Lancet Commission.


"Civilisation is in crisis. We can no longer feed our population a healthy diet while balancing planetary resources," wrote the commission, which was a three-year project and is comprised of 37 scientists from around the globe. "For the first time in 200,000 years of human history, we are severely out of synchronisation with the planet and nature."

The authors say reconnecting with nature is the key in turning around unsustainable agriculture and poor diets. If humans can "eat in a way that works for our planet as well as our bodies, the natural balance of the planet's resources will be restored," they write. "The nature that is disappearing holds the key to human and planetary survival."

Benefits to food security — and health

Market in Barcelona, Spain. The authors recommend consumption of red meats and sugars to decrease by 50 percent, while increasing consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes two-fold. Credit: ja ma/Unsplash)

They lay out the main strategies to achieve food security for the estimated 10 billion people that will inhabit the planet in three decades.

  • Encourage people to eat healthy diets high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables, with less meat and sugar;
  • Incentivize more small and medium farms and diversity within production;
  • Protect land, oceans and the biodiversity and habitats within them by prohibiting land clearing, restoring degraded land, stopping exploitive fishing and keeping some ocean areas off limits to fishing;
  • Curb freshwater use;
  • Reduce fossil fuel emissions;
  • Cut the amount of current food waste in half.

For diets, the authors recommend consumption of red meats and sugars to decrease by 50 percent, while increasing consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes two-fold.

Such changes, according to the report, would not only spur food security, but health: averting between 10.9 million to 11.6 million premature deaths per year and reduce adult deaths by between 19 percent and 23.6 percent.

These changes will not be easy. Already more than 820 million people have insufficient food, another roughly 2 billion people are eating too much unhealthy foods.

Agriculture is the largest pressure humans put on the planet.

In addition, the population of the planet is expected to grow to about 10 billion by 2050 from its current estimated 7.5 billion.

"The agricultural sector, while successful in feeding the world, hasn't been successful in feeding the world well," said co-author, Jessica Fanzo, a professor and researcher of global food and agricultural policy and ethics at Johns Hopkins University.

Diets and "planetary boundaries"

(Credit: Martin Prokop)

To address this crisis, the authors put science-based target numbers to aim for.

For a personal diet, the authors break down how many calories a person should aim for per day for each food group: most calories should come from whole grains, unsaturated oils, legumes, dairy and fruits, with large recommended decreases in meat and sweeteners compared to most current Western Diets.

"I think it's very possible," said co-author Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He added such a diet "would definitely include" the type of traditional Mediterranean diets that have risen in popularity in recent years, and he also pointed out that red meat consumption in the United States has come down 40 percent since its peak in the 1970s.

For the planet, the authors set "planetary boundaries" for food production to achieve the diet recommendations. These are the minimum agricultural pressures we can put on the Earth to adequately feed people but not hamper the planet's systems.

Their boundaries are:

  • 5 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions per year;
  • 90 teragrams (1 teragram = 1 trillion grams) of nitrogen per year;
  • 8 teragrams of phosphorous per year;
  • 2,500 cubic kilometers of water use per year;
  • 10 wildlife extinctions per million species years (this means if there are a million species on Earth, 10 would go extinct every year);
  • 13 million square kilometers of land switched converted to agriculture.

If we do not transform the food system, said co-author Johan Rockström, a researcher and professor in environmental science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, "we are very unlikely to lift humanity out of hunger" and "very likely" to fail on international goals such as the Paris Climate Agreement.

However, on the flip side, there are "win-win opportunities here … adopting healthy diets help us with both climate and sustainable development goals," Rockström said.

"Adopting a healthy reference diet combined with reducing food waste and investing in scientific technology … can take us to the place we want to be," he said.

You can view the entire report here.

climate change health care
Talking to residents about “retreating” from sea level rise is “a tough conversation… They want to stay put,” says Christopher Krahforst, climate adaptation director for Hull, Mass. (Credit: Doug Struck)

Severe flooding increasingly cutting people off from health care

Many more Americans will find themselves regularly cut off from essential services, rescue workers and health care long before water actually reaches their homes, a recent study predicts.

HULL, Ma.—Whenever a storm is coming, the fire company in this town of 10,500 jutting into the Atlantic Ocean sends a truck and personnel to wait in an old fire station on the northern tip of the peninsula.

Keep reading...Show less
Senator Whitehouse & climate change

Senator Whitehouse puts climate change on budget committee’s agenda

For more than a decade, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gave daily warnings about the mounting threat of climate change. Now he has a powerful new perch.
secret life of plastic
BigStock Photo ID: 459640975
Copyright: New Africa
Available for extended license use

The secret life of plastic

What happens to our trash once we’ve done our duty and tossed it into the right bin?

Lego is a company haunted by its own plastic

While the toy brand kills its plans for an oil-free plastic alternative, it’s still pumping out billions of non-biodegradable bricks a year. Can Lego ever be sustainable?
Kitchen faucet
Image by Ron Porter from Pixabay

Salt continues slow contamination of Baton Rouge fresh water

The saltwater wedge moving up the Mississippi River has cities downriver of Baton Rouge on high alert to keep supplied with fresh drinking water.

Supreme Court flooding case could ripple across the energy sector

Texas property owners flooded by Hurricane Harvey and Tropical Storm Imelda are headed to the Supreme Court to make their pitch for why they should be allowed to sue for compensation from the state. Court watchers are closely following the case for how it could also affect the energy sector.

NPR homepage
Big Stock Photo

Climate solutions are necessary. So we're dedicating a week to highlight them

Climate change is here. And this week, NPR is doing something new. We're dedicating an entire week to focus on the search for climate solutions, with stories across our network.

Great lakes ship
Photo by Chris Pagan on Unsplash

Inside the battle to preserve the underwater ghosts of Ontario's Great Lakes

Ontario's Great Lakes region is hailed by many as the greatest shipwreck diving area in the world, but due to invasive species and climate change, the province's rich underwater history might only have a decade or two before it crumbles to dust.
From our Newsroom
Heat, air pollution and climate change … oh my! Was summer 2023 the new normal?

Heat, air pollution and climate change … oh my! Was summer 2023 the new normal?

Intense heat waves induced by climate change create favorable conditions for air pollution to worsen. Scientists say this isn’t likely to change unless action is taken.

environmental justice

LISTEN: Robbie Parks on why hurricanes are getting deadlier

"In places where there are high minority populations they bear, by far, the most burden of deaths from tropical cyclones."

children nature

Opinion: When kids feel the magic of nature, they will want to protect it

Improving our quality of life starts with the simple of act of getting kids outdoors.

birds climate change

In the Gulf of Maine, scientists race to save seabirds threatened by climate change

“I could see that, if successful, the methods developed could likely help these species."

fracking economics

Appalachia’s fracking counties are shedding jobs and residents: Study

The 22 counties that produce 90% of Appalachian natural gas lost a combined 10,339 jobs between 2008 and 2021.

Marathon Petroleum y una ciudad de Texas muestran una  potencial crisis de comunicaciones sobre sustancias químicas

Marathon Petroleum y una ciudad de Texas muestran una potencial crisis de comunicaciones sobre sustancias químicas

En los últimos tres años, Marathon ha violado repetidamente la ley de Aire Limpio y tuvo tres emergencias en el semestre de febrero a julio de 2023.

Stay informed: sign up for The Daily Climate newsletter
Top news on climate impacts, solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered to your inbox week days.