Nutrition Transition and the Structure of Global Food Demand

Abstract

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), established in 1975, provides evidence-based policy solutions to sustainably end hunger and malnutrition and reduce poverty. The Institute conducts research, communicates results, optimizes partnerships, and builds capacity to ensure sustainable food production, promote healthy food systems, improve markets and trade, transform agriculture, build resilience, and strengthen institutions and governance. Gender is considered in all of the Institute's work. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world, including development implementers, public institutions, the private sector, and farmers' organizations, to ensure that local, national, regional, and global food policies are based on evidence. AUTHORS () is research fellow n economist Notices 1. IFPRI Discussion Papers contain preliminary material and research results and are circulated in order to stimulate discussion and critical comment. They have not been subject to a formal external review via IFPRI's Publications Review Committee. Any opinions stated herein are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily representative of or endorsed by the International Food Policy Research Institute. 2. The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on the map(s) herein do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) or its partners and contributors.

Consumers discard a lot more food than widely believed: Estimates of global food waste using an energy gap approach and affluence elasticity of food waste

“…Although we have not explicitly accounted for nutrition transition and it is beyond the scope of this work, as higher incomes, health consciousness (following dietary guidelines) and education (knowing dietary guidelines) are highly correlated, the transition to healthier food habits (including eating more fruits and vegetables) is very likely accountable by a mix of these factors [32,33]. And despite not being as well established as Bennet's Law (declining importance of grains in consumption, with rising incomes) [34], the correlation between income and fruits and vegetable intake is touched upon by some scare literature [31,35,36] and needs more work.…”

Economic Growth, Convergence, and World Food Demand and Supply

“…If the focus is on the consumer, as in Gouel and Guimbard (2017), where food is measured in calorie equivalents of food consumed, the weight on livestock products is likely to be much smaller than-as in this paper-when the focus is on the resource cost of food consumed and livestock products receive a much larger weight. A striking feature of this graph is the inverted-U shape of the aggregate income elasticity of demand for total food as income rises.…”

“…While income elasticities of demand for individual food items generally decline as income rises (Timmer, Falcon and Pearson 1983), the shift in demand from starchy staples to livestock products may cause the income elasticity of total food demand measured in resource requirements to rise over some range. As shown by Gouel and Guimbard (2017), the elasticity of demand for starchy staples is generally low, even for low-income consumers, while the elasticity of demand for livestock products is around 0.5, or higher, for low-to middle-income households.…”

“…An important new paper by Gouel and Guimbard (2017), which uses the highly-flexible Modified Implicitly Directly Additive Demand System (MAIDADS), projects an increase of 95 percent in consumption of animal-based food, as against an 18 percent increase in demand for starchy staples, with the latter being largely driven by population growth towards 2050.…”

Economic growth, convergence and agricultural economics

“…This shift in demand towards livestock products is widely agreed to be an important influence on the overall demand for agricultural output. But it is difficult to analyze because of the complex nature of Engel curves for individual food products (Gouel and Guimbard 2017) and challenges in projecting intermediate use of feedstuffs under economic growth. One problem in using computable general equilibrium models is that any intermediate use of food products tends to grow relative to food demand because of the default assumption in such models that inputs are used in fixed proportion to gross output.…”