Justice in food: on new EAT-Lancet Commission report Politics & News

By showing that food alone drives five of the six breached planetary boundaries and about 30% of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, the new ‘EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems’ report shows how food systems are at the centre of the overlapping climate, biodiversity, water, and pollution crises. Foods from animals account for most agricultural emissions whereas the grains dominate nitrogen, phosphorus, and water use. Only combined action, including cuts to food loss, enhanced and durable productivity gains, and dietary changes, can reverse these trends. The prediction on biogeochemical flows is stark: current agriculture leaves a global nitrogen surplus more than twice in excess of the safe limit. Efficiency gains left uncorrected by good policy can also spur more output that then erases environmental savings. The Commission is pragmatic, too, acknowledging that a response combining everything from dietary changes to emissions mitigation would still only barely return the world’s food systems to safety vis-à-vis the climate and freshwater crises by mid-century; the pressure on nutrient security will remain. It does make one questionable assumption, that GDP will grow 127% in 30 years, whereas policy should focus on lower growth and worse climate shocks.

According to the report, India maintains a cereal-heavy diet while meeting benchmarks by 2050 entails more vegetables, fruits, nuts and legumes, which could raise average consumer prices. Affordability is already fragile in areas that import many of these foods, leaving consumers exposed to price shocks. Justice thus implies a transition towards healthier, more diverse diets while keeping prices in check. But changing diets may not always be desirable: preferences are anchored in religion, caste, and convenience, and on necessity vis-à-vis midday meals and procurement commitments. Rather than a diet-first strategy, then, new standards can cut harmful inputs, fiscal measures can make minimally processed foods cheaper, and procurement can normalise regionally familiar, more affordable dishes. Even then, supply-side reform is essential to overcome water stress, degraded soils, and fossil fuel dependence in cold chains and processing. India also needs to move away from implicit, open-ended incentives to extract groundwater. Finally, the Commission identifies market concentration, weak incentives for preventing labour and ecological harm, and undue corporate influence as factors that could stall change. Justice on the other hand demands stronger collective bargaining by workers and small producers and consumer representation in regulatory processes. These safeguards are partial at best today and need to become guaranteed in practice.