There is an increasing need for transformational changes in the global food system to deliver healthy nutritional outcomes for a growing population while simultaneously ensuring environmental sustainability. However, such changes are subject to political and public constraints that usually allow only gradual, incremental changes to occur. Drawing inspiration from the British cycling team’s concept of marginal gains, we show how transformation might be reconciled with incremental changes. We demonstrate that a set of marginal food system changes acting to increase production efficiency, to reduce losses or to adjust diets could collectively reduce the agricultural land required globally for food production by 21%, or over a third given higher adoption rates. The results show that while all categories of action are important, changes in consumer choices in Europe, North America and Oceania and in the supply-chain in Africa and West and Central Asia have the greatest potential to reduce the land footprint of the food system.

人们日益需要在全球粮食系统中进行变革性变革，以为不断增长的人口提供健康的营养成果，同时确保环境的可持续性。但是，此类更改受到政治和公共约束的约束，通常只允许进行逐渐的，增量的更改。从英国自行车队的边际收益概念中汲取灵感，我们展示了转型如何与增量变化保持一致。我们证明，一系列边际粮食系统的变化可以提高生产效率，减少损失或调整饮食，这可以使全球粮食生产所需的农业土地集体减少21％，或者在采用率较高的情况下减少三分之一。结果表明，尽管所有行动类别都很重要，