For nations across the globe, how grains are produced and more importantly used in the future will increasingly matter, if the world’s environment is to be protected and people’s health is to be sustained.

With greater wealth and technological innovation often comes greater urbanisation and greater consumption of processed foods, prepared meals and snacks. Foods characterised by convenience feature more prominently in diets.

Yet the enhanced, broader consumption of foods associated with increasing wealth and income comes at an environmental cost (Figure 1). We, as global citizens and environmental stewards, face the challenge of lessening the environmental footprint left by our growing populations and changing consumption patterns.

Figure 1: Environmental impacts associated with production of various food items. Source: Clark, M. et al. (2022). Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, issue 10. Available at: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2120584119

As shown in Figure 1, the production of grains, by comparison with other foods, does not create troubling environmental impacts.  However, grains are often a key ingredient in other food stuffs like red meat, dairy products and prepared foods, and it is the environmental footprint of those products that is especially challenging.

So, we face a dilemma posed in Figure 2. Driven by our evolutionary history, we chase calories, food diversity and food novelty. Our incomes and appetites push most of us relentlessly in a north-easterly direction in Figure 2, incurring sizeable environmental impacts on that journey. The technical challenge is either to produce those same foods more benignly or to embrace the difficult choices of changing our diets towards the south-west in Figure 2.  Both paths are feasible; but both are challenging.

AEGIC is investing in projects that enlarge our understanding of consumer sentiment regarding how foods based on grains are produced, including these foods’ environmental credentials. Other key stakeholders in Australia’s grains industry are also active in improving the environmental credentials of Australian grain and promoting greater use of wholegrains.

For nations across the globe, how grains are produced and more importantly used in the future will increasingly matter, if the world’s environment is to be protected and people’s health is to be sustained.

Figure 2: Environmental impacts and nutritional status of various food items. Source: Clark, M. et al. (2022). Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, issue 10. Available at: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.212058411