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Reducing food waste & adopting healthier diets can make regions like Wallonia self-sufficient, reducing reliance on imports.
By shifting to diets like EAT-Lancet and TYFA, and cutting waste, regions can meet food needs sustainably.
Study highlights the importance of dietary habits alongside farming practices for food security.
A new study has found that reducing food waste and shifting to healthier diets can help regions feed themselves without relying heavily on imports. The findings highlight that food habits matter as much as farming practices when it comes to food security.
Today, around a third of the food produced in the world is wasted, either at home, in shops or during production. At the same time, diets in many developed countries are high in meat, dairy and processed foods, which require large amounts of land and resources.
This combination puts pressure on farmland, harms the environment and increases dependence on global supply chains. Events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war showed how quickly those supply chains can be disrupted, leaving countries vulnerable.
The new research, published in npj Sustainable Agriculture by scientists at the University of Liege in Belgium, looked at what would happen if a region changed its diets, reduced waste and farmed differently.
To test this, they used Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium, as a case study. The researchers used computer models to see how the region could become self-sufficient in food.
They tested three diets:
Current diet: What people in Wallonia eat now, high in meat, dairy and processed foods.
EAT-Lancet diet: A global health and sustainability diet with more vegetables, legumes and less meat.
TYFA diet: A European agroecology plan with moderate animal products but stronger focus on local, sustainable farming.
They also compared conventional farming with organic farming and looked at the impact of reducing food waste.
Two levels of food waste were looked at current level, (30 per cent), about one third of food is wasted in homes, shops and during production. Reduced level (10 per cent), much less waste close to what experts believe is possible with better habits.
The model then distributed crops and livestock across Wallonia’s farming regions, each with different soils and climates, to see if food needs could be met.
Researchers found that the “Current diet” is not sustainable. If people continue eating as they do now, Wallonia cannot feed everyone. With conventional farming, the region could meet only 84 per cent of food needs. With organic farming, it dropped to 65 per cent.
Healthier diets make it possible, the report showed. If people shifted to the EAT-Lancet or TYFA diets, the region could reach 100 per cent self-sufficiency with conventional farming. Even with organic farming, food supply improved a lot, 87 per cent with EAT-Lancet and 72 per cent with TYFA.
The findings also highlighted the importance of reducing food waste.
Cutting waste from 30 per cent to 10 per cent had a huge impact, the researchers observed. For example, under the EAT-Lancet diet and organic farming, Wallonia could finally reach full self-sufficiency.
Further, land use becomes more efficient if these dietary and waste management practices are followed. Healthier diets free up farmland. With the EAT-Lancet diet and conventional farming, 18 per cent of farmland would be left unused. This land could then support biodiversity, renewable energy crops (grown for bioenergy) or other ecological practices.
The report also noted that moving from the current diet to EAT-Lancet would reduce the number of farm animals by 73 per cent. The TYFA diet would reduce it by about 47 per cent. This is because both diets rely less on pork and poultry and more on plant foods, while making better use of grasslands for cattle.
The study illustrated that what people eat and how much they waste is just as important as how food is farmed. It also showed that complete food independence is not realistic, but becoming less dependent on imports makes regions more resilient.
Climate change, future pandemics and global conflicts could all affect food supply, making local food security more urgent.
The researchers said their model can be applied anywhere in the world. It gives governments a tool to rethink food and farming policies so people eat better, farmers use land more wisely and societies are less vulnerable to global shocks.