Implications for policy-making and research

market integration, and weather shocks may presumably be comparable to the true market.

in addition to further push food production towards environmental sustainability goals within the EU. A coherent policy package incentivizing the consumption, production, and trade of foods identified beneficial for sustainability and nutrition should be designed to pursue these objectives simultaneously.

Our analysis in Chapter 3 reveals that the consideration of market feedbacks results in lower environmental benefits from food waste reduction within the EU compared to the embedded impacts in the previously wasted food.

Globally however, an over-proportional reduction of emissions can be achieved due to considered regional differences in emission-efficiencies of agricultural production.

If food waste feed (FWF) is available at low costs, this can be beneficial for pig farmers. Nonetheless, policy-makers need to consider that using food waste as feed is limited in its competitiveness compared to conventional feed due to its assumed low protein content. FWF could therefore require subsidization unless a price premium for circular pork is paid on the market.

Furthermore, if FWF is available at a competitively low price, EU pork production and consumption might increase. This could offset intended environmental improvements.

Chapter 4 concludes that enforcing restrictions on livestock density and nitrogen application in the EU could increase pork prices in Africa.

Consequently, dietary diversity could be at risk for African net consumers if animal products become less affordable. Our assessment suggests that substituting domestic production and trade flows are likely to fill the supply gap caused by EU production decreases. To what extent this potential can be used by producers in African regions depends, at least partly, on their competitiveness compared to substituting importers and on the access of their products to export markets. Moreover, increased agricultural production should best be managed environmentally-friendly to avoid tradeoffs between socio-economic and environmental goals. One often discussed attempt to reduce these tradeoffs is referred to “sustainable intensification” (Mouratiadou et al., 2021)⁴.

4 I contributed to this article during the time of my doctoral studies. It is not part of this thesis as a main chapter.

Despite increased production potentials for non-EU regions, the 2020 global economic downturn as consequence of the Corona virus pandemic and the food price increases following the war in Ukraine in 2022 reveal risks incorporated in the interconnectedness of global value chains. These observations stress the necessity to develop crisis prevention strategies that also involve measures to support domestic production of critical products for national food self-sufficiency and food security. Climate change may increase the frequency of food system instability events in the future (Dellink et al., 2017).

In order to reach environmental improvements at global level, additional measures are required to minimize leakage. Jointly reducing EU demand and supply of emission-intensive products could contribute to environmental sustainability. Implied social and economic consequences for EU farmers need to be addressed with additional instruments. However, combined measures might limit trade opportunities for low- and middle-income countries with the EU that could otherwise improve social and economic sustainability.

Our findings in Chapter 5 clearly suggest that price volatility can be transmitted from international futures to local markets in sub-Saharan Africa. This can increase stunting in children within the following year across household groups. Poor, rural, and agricultural households are affected most strongly. This stresses that also food producing households can be net food buyers and their children’s nutrition may deteriorate due to higher and more volatile staple food prices, especially if these occur unexpectedly. Impacts related to other nutrition indicators turn out to be less clear. Children should therefore be protected from negative consequences of price volatility. Measures to increase resilience and to reduce transmission of futures volatility to local food systems could be a political aim. Policy-makers in various countries should increase efforts to improve food access, especially among the global poor, in order to reach SDG2, zero hunger, by 2030.

In this thesis, we only assess a selection of SDG impacts under consideration of food system drivers and feedbacks. These SDGs are very much

interlinked to other SDGs such as SDG1, no poverty, SDG3, good health, SDG4, quality education, SDG5, gender equality, SDG6, clean water, SDG7, clean energy, or SDG14, life below water. Ongoing and future research will help to better understand these links and disclose further tradeoffs, but also synergies. Despite the occurrence of tradeoffs, policy-makers need to push for the actual implementation of sustainability policies to keep the SDGs within reach.

Progress towards SDGs should be stimulated by political action. Citizens can demand such policies from their representatives. However, in addition, behavioral change can also be pursued by each food system actor, including the researchers who must live up to their findings (Sanz-Cobena et al., 2020)⁵.

We address synergies and tradeoffs and apply a holistic approach that integrates economic market and trade feedbacks. Heterogeneity is accounted for to the extent possible in the context of each study. With this thesis, existing research is complemented by assessments of potential future EU agri-food policies and a better understanding of food price volatility implications that are needed for the transformation to a sustainable food system.

5 I contributed to this article during the time of my doctoral studies. It is not part of this thesis as a main chapter.