The main goal of this work package is to assess the impact of multiple drivers (such as climate change and population growth) on future food demand and supply, both in Finland and globally, with a particular focus on water. We will explore how different adaptation and mitigation options, such as improved resource management, food loss reduction, changing diets, and future food technologies, would reduce environmental impacts – and help us to stay within planetary boundaries – while ensuring sufficient food for all.
By evaluating various future scenarios and adaptation strategies, the findings can guide policy decisions to better prepare for and mitigate future challenges while minimizing environmental impacts. Therefore, this work promotes pathways towards sustainable food systems that are resilient and capable of supporting a growing global population without transgressing ecological limits.
The work is divided into four parts:
1 Scenario Narratives. We first co-develop exploratory food system scenarios with the key stakeholders. Detailed scenario settings include various combinations of drivers and their diverging development pathways. These settings can cover, for example, business-as-usual scenarios with minimal changes to current food consumption and trade patterns, changes in trade flows (e.g., maximizing domestic production), technology changes (e.g., novel foods), and changes in diets.
2 Demand projections. Here the aim is to assess the development of the global food demand system under different scenarios. We build an econometric demand system model for various food categories, incorporating consumer preferences to model consistent demand changes, e.g., under water constraints in different diet scenarios. The starting point of the analysis is the estimation of the MAIDADS model, which is flexible enough to cover a wide range of consumer wealth levels. The estimated demand system will be linked to the OptoFood model (next part), and it will support consistent scenario modeling.
3 Scenario modelling. Here, we aim to quantify the scenarios by evaluating how different combinations of drivers influence the use of natural resources, with a specific focus on water and cropland. To achieve this, we will integrate data collected from earlier tasks and other work packages within this project. We will employ the Aalto OptoFood cropland optimization model to generate detailed, quantified scenarios applicable to both the Finnish context and on a global scale. Global resource use and impact aggregates are assessed against planetary boundaries to provide a common ground for sustainability communication.
4 Adaptation and mitigation opportunities. We aim to quantify the potential of various mitigation and adaptation options. We will incorporate these strategies into food system scenarios by assessing practical combinations of measures to meet future food demand in a balanced way. These measures can include dietary changes, livestock feed material adjustments, novel food production and more traditional agricultural productivity measures such as yield gap closure measures including improved irrigation and nutrient use and land management.