Resource Requirements of Food Demand in the United States

Patrick Canning, Sarah Rehkamp, Claudia Hitaj and Christian Peters

No 303676, Economic Research Report from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: Natural resources facilitate production of an adequate daily food supply for Americans. Food consumption in the United States, measured in total calories per day, increased about 50 percent over a recent 25-year span. Understanding how changes in food consumption impact the U.S. food system’s use of the country’s natural resources requires consideration of many factors. We find that diets, or food choices, are likely to be an important factor. For example, had the diets of Americans who met all the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans back in 2007 become the typical American diet of that time, then per capita consumption of the fruits, vegetables, legumes/nuts/seeds, eggs, and dairy categories would have increased, while per capita consumption in the sugars/sweets/beverages, fats/oils/salad dressings, grain products, and meat/poultry/fish/mixtures food groups would have declined. In such a scenario, under the production and marketing practices in 2007, nutrition and resource conservation goals would have been mostly complementary, or synergistic. As one notable exception, water conservation in particular may have required tradeoffs between competing goals, especially for production of fruits, vegetables, and dairy. This report combines empirical evidence of resource use in the system in 2007 with the presentation of a framework for a broader empirical study of sustainable pathways to producing a healthy and adequate food supply.

Keywords: Food; Consumption/Nutrition/Food; Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/303676/files/err-273.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uersrr:303676

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.303676

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Research Report from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().