The role of domestic markets and public policy for sustainable food systems: the case of Brazil

Introduction

Existing literature on agricultural markets, telecoupling, and supply chain governance focuses on global value chains, largely overlooking domestic markets – though these are responsible for the majority of food (74-88%), agricultural land use (78%), deforestation (61-71%), and global land use emissions (73%).

Data Challenges

A key barrier to the study of domestic markets is the lack of data. While country-level data are commonly used to track international trade, the data necessary to map subnational trade flows within domestic markets are seldom collated.

Project Overview

In the proposed project, we will bridge this knowledge gap by integrating novel datasets sourced from:

• Citizen science
• Wholesale markets
• Freight platforms
• Government procurement contracts

Our focus will be on mapping the flow of food products within Brazil – the world’s ninth largest economy, a rapidly urbanizing, emerging market with a booming agricultural sector and large domestic market.

Methodology

We will employ life cycle assessment methods to these food flow data to compute the land use, deforestation, and carbon footprints of millions of individual supply chains and products. This will provide an unprecedented analysis of how the environmental impact of consumption varies across different populations and cities and how it relates to urban context.

A key advance on previous product footprints will be our combination of supply chain data alongside information on:

1. Land tenure
2. Agricultural suitability
3. Commodity prices
4. Forest fires

This will help differentiate how much deforestation is driven by agriculture, rather than other contributing factors.

Policy Analysis

Finally, the project will analyze public policies affecting food production and consumption, including:

• A large-scale assessment of the Brazilian school meal program (PNAE) to understand its nutritional and environmental impacts
• An examination of how agricultural subsidies can be redirected to foster a sustainability transformation within the Brazilian food system.