Nutrient Adequacy of Global Food Production

Abstract

A major challenge for countries around the world is to provide a nutritionally adequate diet to their population with limited available resources. A comprehensive analysis that reflects the adequacy of domestic food production for meeting national nutritional needs in different countries is lacking. Here we combined national crop, livestock, aquaculture, and fishery production statistics for 191 countries obtained from UN FAO with food composition databases from USDA and accounted for food loss and waste occurring at various stages to calculate the amounts of calories and 24 essential nutrients destined for human consumption. We then compared the domestic production quantities of all nutrients with their population-level requirements estimated from age- and sex-specific intake recommendations of WHO to assess the nutrient adequacy of the national food production. Our results show inadequate production of seven out of 24 nutrients (choline, calcium, polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin E, folate, and iron) in most countries, despite the overall adequacy of the total global production. High-income countries produce adequate amounts of dietary nutrients in general, while the foods produced in low-income countries mainly comprising roots and cereal products often lack in important micronutrients such as choline, calcium, and vitamin B12. South Asian food production barely fulfills half of the required vitamin A. Our study identifies target nutrients for each country whose domestic production should be encouraged for improving nutritional adequacy through interventions such as increasing the production of foods or fortified foods that are rich in these inadequate nutrients while not undermining the local environment. This assessment can serve as an evidence base for nutrition-sensitive policies facilitating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of zero hunger and good health and well-being.

Dietary Change and Global Sustainable Development Goals

“…Agricultural production to feed increasing world population with rising income levels and globalization is one of the leading causes of climate change, ongoing biodiversity extinctions, land degradation, water pollution and ecosystem service loss (Kastner et al, 2021). Yet, the diets of almost all nations lack in one or more micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) essential for human wellbeing (Chaudhary and Krishna, 2019;Chen et al, 2021). Widespread economic inequalities and the supply instability risks under emerging disturbances like the pandemic and climate change may increase the risk for inadequate and unsustainable diets in near future and thus calls for urgent research and policy efforts (Kimani-Murage et al, 2021).…”

Nitrogen in the food system

“…However, in affluent contexts where intake of animal-source food is currently very high but where people can also afford and access a wide range of plant-based foods, the nutritional importance of animal-source food is much smaller [179]. As a global average, humans consume well above their dietary needs of most nutrients [180]. To reduce N emissions and related impacts, the most effective change would be for these high consuming populations to 7: Per-capita food protein supply and gross domestic product (GDP) in countries of the world.…”

A quantitative framework for characterizing the current and obtaining a future sustainable agricultural production mix meeting environmental, nutritional, and economic goals

“…The first step of characterization entails quantification of damage done to different domains of the environment due to crop and livestock production in a country vis-à-vis global environmental planetary boundaries (Steffen et al 2015), calculating what amounts of different nutrients (calories, protein, vitamins, minerals etc.) essential for human health are being produced vis-à-vis national population requirements (Chen et al 2021) and what monetary profit farmers derive from their produce vis-à-vis national target for farmers income. Moreover, since the climate, soil, growing conditions and other farm sector policies often vary from state to state especially for large countries, it is necessary to conduct such an analysis at a sub-national rather than at a national level so as to take into account regional production characteristics and constraints in achieving a sustainable mix (Das et al 2018, Zhang et al 2021, Mukherjee 2022.…”

“…Since not all crop and livestock production amount is consumed by humans and a part of them is used for other purposes such as animal feed, seed or non-edible products or lost during different stages such as during farm stage (food loss), processing, or consumption stage, we calculated the net nutrient production per crop and state destined for human consumption by applying the necessary correction factors for each crop (Chen et al 2021).…”

“…Regarding nutrition indicators, the total annual national production of each of 25 essential nutrients were compared with their respective population requirements (table 1) as per India's national institute of nutrition (NIN 2011, Chen et al 2021. We also carried out this comparison after subtracting food exports and adding imports to the total nutrient production (FAO 2024).…”