Competing for food waste – Policies’ market feedbacks imply sustainability tradeoffs

Highlights

• Food waste reduction and reuse lower food prices and improve consumers’ food access.

• EU emission savings from food waste reductions are partly shifted abroad via trade.

• Halving food waste generates larger emission savings than valorization as pig feed.

• Food waste-based pig feed can incentivize protein imports to balance pig nutrition.

• Food waste policies should consider unintended competition for food waste biomass.

Abstract

Reducing food waste and reusing it as animal feed are often regarded promising solutions to enhance sustainability. Hitherto, food waste policy assessments rarely account for interdependencies between reduction and reuse interventions, and how their market - including trade - feedbacks influence sustainability outcomes. Here, we apply a global agricultural economic model to assess the impact of food system feedbacks on sustainability when EU consumer food waste is reduced or reused as pig feed. Our results show that food waste interventions easily result in sustainability tradeoffs. Halving food waste generates larger EU emission savings than its valorization as pig feed. EU savings remain below those expected when not considering market feedbacks, but additional emission savings are projected to arise abroad as consequence of shifting trade flows. When food waste is halved, decreasing food prices improve food access for consumers but reduce farmers’ income. The use of food waste as pig feed is only economically competitive if this novel feed is comparably cheap but then it stimulates pig production and imports of protein feed with potentially unsustainable consequences. Food waste reduction limits the amount of food waste biomass available for valorization. This could create unintended competition for food waste biomass. Thus, clear food waste reduction and valorization targets are needed, potentially focusing valorization on inedible waste parts only. Policy-makers need to consider such interdependencies when designing food waste interventions.

Introduction

One of the declared EU policy goals is the reduction of food waste (European Commission, 2019). Halving consumer food waste by 2030 is manifested in UN SDG target 12.3 (UN, 2015). Besides reduction, EU policies aim to valorize food waste biomass to decrease the need for resource inputs and increase circularity in the economy (European Commission, 2020a, 2020b, 2019).

Reducing and valorizing food waste is foremost argued to be of environmental, economic and social benefit (Kummu et al., 2012; Lopez Barrera and Hertel, 2021). However, in an interconnected food system, the benefits for some may turn out as costs for others (Rutten, 2013). For instance, valorizing food waste as animal feed can avoid feed-food competition and reduce the use of natural resources (van Zanten et al., 2018). However, declining food and feed demand as consequence of food waste interventions might lower agricultural production levels and thus reduce producers’ income and economic growth (Campoy-Muñoz et al., 2017; Kuiper and Cui, 2020; Philippidis et al., 2019). Also, resulting implications for food availability and food security depend on the actual implementation of food waste reduction interventions and how the markets adjust in consequence. Thus, assessments of food waste interventions need to account for potential consequences across sustainability dimensions to capture occurring tradeoffs at food system level so that these end up being considered in actual policy design.

Existing studies rarely account for market and trade feedbacks of food waste interventions (Section 2). Some food waste assessments imply that embedded environmental impacts are reduced proportionally to the prevented food waste as they implicitly assume that this food is not produced anymore (Birney et al., 2017; Usubiaga et al., 2018). This approach, however, neglects trade, market, and rebound effects that influence the extent to which and where environmental improvements actually occur (Kuiper and Cui, 2020; Lopez Barrera and Hertel, 2021; Salemdeeb et al., 2017a). Furthermore, the simultaneous implementation of different food waste policies may cause conflicts as preventing food waste reduces the potentially available biomass for valorization. Although the hierarchical ordering of food waste measures favors prevention (Papargyropoulou et al., 2014), in political reality, several policies are often implemented at the same time. Assessments must therefore assess interventions jointly and at food system level, including market feedbacks, for effective policy coherence.

With this study we add to the literature by analyzing the effects of two EU consumer food waste interventions on food consumption, production, trade flows, and environmental impacts (i.e., emissions, nitrogen surpluses, agricultural land use change) using a global partial equilibrium (PE) economic model for the agricultural sector. The first intervention results in a 50% reduction of avoidable consumer food waste (FWcut). The second intervention is based on the valorization of plant-based consumer food waste as pig feed (FWfeed). Both interventions are assessed separately and in combination (FWcombi). Our analysis shows that reducing avoidable consumer food waste can improve food access as market feedbacks lower prices. Producers on the other hand need to cope with a declining demand for their products. Our results emphasize the environmental benefits of an EU-wide reduction in avoidable consumer food waste and where these may occur, whereas those related to valorizing food waste as animal feed are smaller and the establishment of a valorization system might create future demand for food waste and incentives for increased pork production and consumption as well as imports of protein feeds.