Global Food Demand Scenarios for the 21st Century
Open accessAbstract
Long-term food demand scenarios are an important tool for studying global food security and for analysing the environmental impacts of agriculture. We provide a simple and transparent method to create scenarios for future plant-based and animal-based calorie demand, using time-dependent regression models between calorie demand and income. The scenarios can be customized to a specific storyline by using different input data for gross domestic product (GDP) and population projections and by assuming different functional forms of the regressions. Our results confirm that total calorie demand increases with income, but we also found a non-income related positive time-trend. The share of animal-based calories is estimated to rise strongly with income for low-income groups. For high income groups, two ambiguous relations between income and the share of animal-based products are consistent with historical data: First, a positive relation with a strong negative time-trend and second a negative relation with a slight negative time-trend. The fits of our regressions are highly significant and our results compare well to other food demand estimates. The method is exemplarily used to construct four food demand scenarios until the year 2100 based on the storylines of the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). We find in all scenarios a strong increase of global food demand until 2050 with an increasing share of animal-based products, especially in developing countries.
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The majority of studies (47) used simulation models, 9 used statistical extrapolation, and 1 mainly used expert input.
“The majority of studies (n = 47) employ simulation models, while some use statistical extrapolation approaches (n = 9) that use regression techniques to estimate future food security 1,13 .Only one study 2 mainly used expert input to prepare the projections.”
From A meta-analysis of projected global food demand and population at risk of hunger for the period 2010–2050 (2021) · cites this paper as [13]
Several selected studies present regional-level food security projections that indicate different patterns and futures, but the analysis cannot analyze them.
“Several of the selected studies present food security projections at the broad regional level 13,64,67 that clearly indicate different patterns and futures, which we are unable to analyse.”
From A meta-analysis of projected global food demand and population at risk of hunger for the period 2010–2050 (2021) · cites this paper as [13]
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- Authors
- Bodirsky, B. L., Rolinski, S., Biewald, A., Weindl, I., Popp, A., & Lotze-Campen, H.
- Affiliations
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU)
- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (DE)
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Rolinski, Susanne
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2015-11-04
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- e0139201
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4633131
- OpenAlex
- W1909223586
- Cited by
- 297
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 37 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 35 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 15.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- RENATE (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Publication Database PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RENATE (cc-by)
- Funders
- European Commission (265104, 226701, 243888)
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (01LL0901A, 031A103B, 01LL0904B)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Agricultural and Food Production Studies
- Keywords
- global food demand, animal-based food consumption, plant-based food consumption, food security, population projections, GDP projections, developing countries
- MeSH terms
- Agriculture, Animals, Child, Eating, Food Supply, Humans, Income, Models, Theoretical, Regression Analysis, Databases, Factual, Child Mortality, History, 21st Century
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