Total costs*
21,335,000 €
Total requested funding*
1,608,000 €
Duration
Feb. 1, 2015 — Jan. 31, 2018
About
Food systems involve a complex interaction of the production, consumption, distribution and access to food at global and regional scales. Combined modeling systems that account for food demand, supply, and an explicit representation of land use are still in their infancy. Thus, the consequences of how various supply- and demand- side measures impact upon, and are influenced by land use change are unknown.
DEVIL combines state-of-the art food system and land use models with spatial datasets.
The objectives of DEVIL are to:
- Bring together experienced researchers who have been leading the independent strands of work. This will for the first time permit a detailed examination of the feedback loop interactions between land use change and food security dynamics.
- Propose an integrated modeling system that will examine a range of scenarios, including production side measures to improve food security (e.g.,sustainable intensification, redistribution and trade) and demand side measures (e.g., changing diets, reduced waste).
- Examine the global feedbacks of these scenarios on land use and food supply as well as asses the differential impacts in the project’s study regions (South America, Sub Saharan Africa, and South Asia).
Results
- Further development of state-of-the-art databases on crops, livestock, food production and nutrition, and on agricultural inputs and environmental impacts.
- Development of a new agent-based model of the global food system that includes trade, and land surface models to assess impacts of changes in the food system.
- Scenario modeling to show how nutrition security of limited land could be achieved, including interventions such as sustainable intensification, culturally appropriate dietary change toward sustainable healthy diets, and food waste reduction.
- Projected population increases and dietary transitions cannot be sustained in the future. They would require more land, which would have disastrous consequences on the global climate change, biodiversity and other environmental aspects. Sustainable intensification could limit these adverse impacts somewhat, but they would not be eliminated.
- Additional changes to the food system, on the demand-side, are necessary to deliver nutrition security in a globally sustainable manner. Two key demand-side measures are a reduction in overconsumption of livestock products, and reduced per- and post-consumer food waste.
- A combination of sustainable intensification, dietary change toward sustainable healthy diets (with much lower consumption of livestock products than projected), and waste reduction by 50% of current levels, are able to provide nutrition security on limited land.