New Delhi: Following the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission recommendations could reduce global agricultural land use by up to six per cent by 2050 and lead to a 42 per cent decline, or $630 billion, in global livestock production value compared to 2020, a new analysis has estimated.
In India, overall agricultural production value could increase by 46 per cent ($198 billion) by 2050 compared to 2020 -- within this, Indian crop production value could increase by 65 per cent ($208 billion) while livestock production value would decrease by eight per cent ($10 billion), researchers said.
The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission report outlines how a largely plant-based diet could prevent up to 15 million premature deaths annually, while radically reducing global agriculture's environmental footprint.
Researchers, including those from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Cornell University, US, looked at the implications of implementing a 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission style food systems transformation.
The analysis shows that following the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission recommendations could also see agriculture-related net carbon dioxide emissions from land-use change fall by 85 per cent by 2050, compared to 2020 levels.
Lead author Matt Gibson, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "Transforming food systems would deliver enormous potential benefits to our health and the environment but, as our results make clear, they would also lead to fundamental changes to global agriculture and affect the lives of millions of farmers and food producers."
Gibson added that governments need to rise to the challenge and make difficult decisions for the good of our health and the planet.
"This means confronting powerful groups that profit from the status quo and a global food system that currently fails both those who produce our food and those who should be nourished by it," Gibson said.
The study suggests the impacts of food transformation on agriculture at a regional and national level would vary.
For example, overall US agricultural production value would decrease by 21 per cent ($76 billion) by 2050 compared to 2020, but within this, the US crop production value would increase by 20 per cent ($40 billion) while livestock production value would decrease by 73 per cent ($116 billion), the study found.
"Here we show that, by 2050, the transformation of food systems towards healthy diets (adoption of the EAT-Lancet reference diet), improved productivity and halving of food waste results in a fundamental restructuring of global agriculture, aspects of which break with historical trends," the authors wrote.
"Scenario simulations using a multimodel ensemble of ten global economic models show a six per cent median (typical) decrease in agricultural land compared with 2020 levels," they said.
The authors said taking bold policy decisions now can help support vulnerable producers and consumers in a world transforming towards healthier, more sustainable diets.