The future of food demand: understanding differences in global economic models |
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| Authors: | Hugo Valin Ronald D. Sands Dominique van der Mensbrugghe Gerald C. Nelson Helal Ahammad Elodie Blanc Benjamin Bodirsky Shinichiro Fujimori Tomoko Hasegawa Petr Havlik Edwina Heyhoe Page Kyle Daniel Mason‐D'Croz Sergey Paltsev Susanne Rolinski Andrzej Tabeau Hans van Meijl Martin von Lampe Dirk Willenbockel |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Ecosystems Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), , 2361 Laxenburg, Austria;2. Resource and Rural Economics Division, Economic Research Service (ERS), U.S. Department of Agriculture, , Washington, DC 20250 USA;3. Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESAD), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, , Roma, 00153 Italy;4. Environment and Production Technology Division, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), , Washington, DC 20006‐1002 USA;5. University of Illinois, Urbana‐Champaign, , Champaign, USA;6. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES), , 1563 Canberra, Australia;7. Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, , Cambridge, MA 02139‐4307 USA;8. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), , 14473 Potsdam, Germany;9. National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Center for Social & Environmental Systems Research, , Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305‐8506 Japan;10. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, , College Park, MD 20740 USA;11. Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI), Wageningen University and Research Centre, , Netherlands;12. Trade and Agriculture Directorate (TAD), Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD), , France;13. Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE, , United Kingdom |
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| Abstract: | Understanding the capacity of agricultural systems to feed the world population under climate change requires projecting future food demand. This article reviews demand modeling approaches from 10 global economic models participating in the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP). We compare food demand projections in 2050 for various regions and agricultural products under harmonized scenarios of socioeconomic development, climate change, and bioenergy expansion. In the reference scenario (SSP2), food demand increases by 59–98% between 2005 and 2050, slightly higher than the most recent FAO projection of 54% from 2005/2007. The range of results is large, in particular for animal calories (between 61% and 144%), caused by differences in demand systems specifications, and in income and price elasticities. The results are more sensitive to socioeconomic assumptions than to climate change or bioenergy scenarios. When considering a world with higher population and lower economic growth (SSP3), consumption per capita drops on average by 9% for crops and 18% for livestock. The maximum effect of climate change on calorie availability is ?6% at the global level, and the effect of biofuel production on calorie availability is even smaller. |
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| Keywords: | World food demand Socioeconomic pathways Climate change Computable general equilibrium Partial equilibrium C63 C68 Q11 Q54 |
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