What Role Can Agricultural Policies Play in Encouraging Healthier Diets?

Over the past twenty years, the effects of agricultural policies on nutrition have received increasing attention from policymakers. A major reason is a worsening epidemic of overweight and obesity that, on top of persistent hunger and undernutrition, has alarming consequences for public health. Excessive calorie consumption and unbalanced diets underpin this trend. Agricultural production fundamentally responds to, rather than drives, final food demands. However, some aspects of structural change within the sector, in particular productivity-led price declines for energy dense food staples, may be contributing to over-consumption and unbalanced diets. Agricultural policies that lower the prices of basic food commodities, in particular support for productivity enhancing investments, may reinforce that structural tendency. Yet productivity growth also improves poor people's access to affordable food and will be essential for sustainable production growth. Prices cannot be used to achieve multiple and often competing policy goals or as the primary lever to arbitrate among them. Ultimately, the challenge for policymakers is to provide effective choices to consumers, and change dietary habits and customs, so that consumers limit their consumption of any product or specific ingredient to healthy amounts at any given price level.