The food system accounts for a large share of fossil fuel consumption in the United States, and energy accounts for a substantial and highly variable share of food costs. This intersection between food and energy markets suggests that public and private decisions affecting one market will have spillover effects in the other. For example, would increasing the share of population having diets that align with Federal dietary guidance reduce fossil fuel use in the U.S. food system? Would a carbon dioxide (CO2) tax improve diet quality? To address these issues, we use the most recent data available to integrate the material-flows accounting framework adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission into the existing food-system accounting structure of the ERS Food Dollar accounts. Then, we use mathematical optimization to model healthy diets. Our research indicates that U.S. agri-food industries are more sensitive to energy price changes than nonfood industries. We find that in 2007, fossil fuels linked to U.S. food consumption produced 13.6 percent of all fossil fuel CO2 emissions economywide. Our study of alternative diets shows there are many ways to meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. If Americans made a minimal dietary shift to eat healthy, we find food-system energy use would decrease by 3 percent. By making greater changes from current consumption, we find foodsystem energy use could be reduced by as much as 74 percent. A tax on CO2 emissions from fossil fuels would increase the cost of a typical meal by an average of 1.7 percent, with estimates ranging between 0.2 and 5.4 percent. Keywords: Carbon emissions tax, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, energy prices, environmental input-output model, food policy, fossil fuels, food prices, greenhouse gases, healthy diet, sustainability, U.S. food system

How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.

Finds that the current methods of fossil-fuel based agriculture are not sustainable, and recommends the transition to localized agriculture.

This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.

This book provides facts and figures to show how fast fossil fuel energy is being used up in the developed countries. It considers the problems of feeding the population of the developing countries to whom the expedient of using fossil fuel energy to boost food production is not available.

On August 7â€"8, 2019, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a public workshop in Washington, DC, to review the status of current and emerging knowledge about innovations for modern food systems and strategies for meeting future needs. The workshop addressed different perspectives on the topic of food systems and would build on a workshop on the topic of sustainable diets hosted by the Food Forum in August 2018. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.