National Food Strategy: Understanding the Impact of Changing Food Production and Diets on Food Prices and Affordability

Executive summary: 1. The Food System has high hidden costs, but these hidden costs can be cut significantly by shifting towards lower-carbon, more sustainable farming practices and healthy, plant-based diets. Neither shift alone will be sufficient, but taken together they have potential to cut farming-related emissions by 50- 80%, restore nature on some agriculture land, and improve public health. 2. Different models of sustainable farming are available that solve for different climate and nature objectives, and all have their place. Adopting more sustainable farming practices at scale is likely to increase the price of animal products, but not plants. 3. Without a shift in diets to plant based foods, switchingto better farming practices will not be enough to achieveour climate and biodiversity targets and make food affordable. Our analysis looks at two diets that can outcompete animal products, but further industry innovation and investment is required: a. Plant-based diets: these are desirable on both health and environmental grounds. They are affordable now, but not all plant based products are competitive on taste and convenience for busy consumers, especially if cooking from scratch b. Meat mimicking’ products outperform some plant based meals in taste and convenience, and are set to fall towards price parity with meat as the category scales up 4. Shifting to better farming practices and plant-based diets simultaneously will keep food affordable, reduce its environmental impact and improve people’s health and wellbeing