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Policies to boost biofuel production and use—crop subsidies, mandates, and other measures—came under intense scrutiny during the food price spikes of 2007/08, 2010/11, and 2012/13. As prices of maize, grains, oilseeds, and other feedstocks rose in those crises—more than doubling in some cases—critics pointed to their increasing use in biofuel production as a major factor behind high global food prices.

Globally, agricultural support is high—totaling about $600 billion annually—and continues to increase. The harmful impacts of subsidies on trade are widely known, but their harmful environmental impacts are less well-understood. This was the theme of a December 14 policy seminar organized by IFPRI in collaboration with the University of Adelaide, Australia (UA).

As the world grapples with the increasing impacts of climate change, global policymakers need to take much stronger action to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). This is the message from the recent UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2022. The report provides the stark conclusion that current national climate change pledges can only limit global warming rises by 2.4-2.6°C by the end of the century – far from the 1.5°C goal set forth by the Paris Agreement. To stand a chance of reaching that ambitious goal, global GHG emissions need to be cut by 45 percent by 2030.

This blog post is based on the T20 Policy Brief, "Environmental Sustainability of Food Systems, Global Food Security and Trade."

Mitigating climate change and the degradation of natural resources while increasing the production of safe and nutritious food to eradicate hunger and ensure food security for a rapidly growing population is the most important and urgent challenge facing humanity today.

Over the past two years, the impacts of ongoing regional conflicts, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russian-Ukraine war have drastically weakened the world’s already inadequate, unsustainable food systems. This confluence of factors has induced in supply chain disruptions and high and volatile prices for food, fertilizer, and fuel, and the result has been the third global food crisis in less than two decades.