Hans Grinsted Jensen

Summary: Insect‐based food and feed have received a lot of attention recently. The EU Farm‐to‐Fork Strategy, for example, mentions insects as an alternative feed material that could reduce the environmental and climate impact of livestock production. Insects are an interesting source of feed because of their ability to convert many types of organic material into protein and fat, including food products that currently go to waste. Having an insect industry producing protein meal from recycled food waste would contribute towards more sustainable agricultural and aquaculture sectors. However, there are many questions associated with this development which we cannot answer at this point. For instance, how much food waste is actually available at the European and global levels for insect‐based protein meal production? If we used the available food waste for insect meal production, what would be the consequences for the agricultural markets and how would it affect the agricultural GHG emission budget? In this article we show that there is a considerable amount of food waste that could be used for insect meal production; which would have substantial impacts on agricultural markets – particularly in the case where there was some relaxation of regulations. According to our calculations, agricultural greenhouse gas emissions would only be modestly affected.

Limiting climate change below a 2 °C temperature increase this century will require substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and the transition to a climate-friendly, low carbon society. In this paper, the economic impact of a less carbon-intensive economy on agricultural markets is estimated by means of an integrated modelling framework. First, the macroeconomic impacts of moving into a global low carbon economy are analysed by applying different carbon taxes in a general equilibrium modelling framework. Second, the potential adoption of emission mitigation technologies is quantified and used in the Aglink-Cosimo model to assess the impacts on agricultural markets of emission mitigation scenarios compatible with the 2.0 °C target prescribed in the Paris Agreement. Results for 2030 show reductions in global non-CO₂ GHG emissions from agriculture (i.e., methane and nitrous oxide) by 10, 16 and 19% in 50, 100 and 150 USD/t CO₂eq global carbon tax scenarios, respectively (Least Developed Countries excluded). Only between 0.6% and 1.3% of the global reduction is caused by indirect macroeconomic effects, although at the regional level they can cause up to 5.8% of the reduction in agricultural emissions. Results suggest that ambitious mitigation targets can provoke significant negative impacts on agricultural production and underline the importance of integrating GHG emission developments and impacts of related policies into agricultural market projections.