CIE Seminar Series 2022: Responsible agri-food consumption and production patterns & Food production and dietary nutrient gaps

DATE & TIME: Friday 22nd July 2022 @ 12pm.

LOCATION: Via Zoom. Click HERE to connect (Meeting ID: 812 5556 2274, Password: 89428618).

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ABSTRACT.

Dr. Özge Geyik: Food systems are at the core of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The synchronous epidemics of malnutrition (undernutrition, overnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies) and climate change, the so-called global syndemic, poses a growing threat around the world. In this thesis, I developed a multidimensional dataset which combines highly disaggregate primary food production and trade data with population-level dietary nutrient requirements.

I showed that while total food production has kept pace with the growing population and has been able to provide the global population with adequate energy, protein, iron, zinc, folate, and vitamin B12; up to 40% of the population live in countries with inadequate nutrient supplies. I found that current food production and trade patterns result in dietary nutrient gaps, particularly for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, I linked my dataset with corresponding agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and quantify the minimum emissions associated with closing the nutrient gap.

My findings suggest that context-specific and climate friendly food baskets, together with enhanced agricultural productivity and reduced food loss and waste, could help close the nutrient gap within the emissions budget compatible with the Paris Agreement.

Abdullah Shaikh: The agri-food system is a major driver of natural resource use and contributes to the exceedance of several key environmental limits such as the land-system change and the freshwater use planetary boundaries. Under the Sustainable Development Goal 12, countries need to determine whether the environmental impacts of national agri-food consumption and production are within their own national environmental limits to achieve responsible consumption and production. However, little is known about the linkages between domestic consumption and trade of agri-food commodities and their joint impact on both national and global environmental limits.

This thesis explored responsible agri-food consumption and production patterns of countries in the context of virtual flows of cropland and freshwater footprints embedded in the trade of agri-food commodities. It extended the existing literature by explicitly delineating the shared responsibility of countries towards their domestic and international cropland and freshwater resources.

The findings informed consumer countries about the opportunities for reducing their global impact of agri-food consumption through co-investments in countries with high potential to increase production and water-use efficiencies.

BIO.

About Özge: Özge is a postdoctoral researcher in the Sustainable Food Systems research group, University of Göttingen, Germany. She completed her PhD studies on sustainable and nutrition-sensitive food systems at the Planet-A Lab, Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University, Australia.

With a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and a master’s degree in industrial ecology, she has a wide variety of interests and professional experiences in projects involving life cycle sustainability assessments, sustainable agriculture, and industrial symbiosis. She enjoys environmental accounting of consumer decisions

Follow Dr. Ozge Geyik on Twitter.

About Abdullah: Abdullah Shaikh has research experience in the planetary boundary, environmental footprint, and agri-food space. Before his PhD, he did his master’s in industrial and System Engineering and researched on the water footprints of electricity production.

He is currently working as an eResearch Analyst and supports the research infrastructure at the University of New South Wales. He provides training, one-to-one consultation, HPC and Cloud computing support to the researchers of UNSW. He uses his research experience and skillset to assist researchers with their projects.

Follow Abdullah Shaikh on Twitter.

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Meeting ID: 812 5556 2274