Regenerative agriculture and food as medicine: an economic perspective
The burden of chronic disease in the European Union is staggering, as 86% of all deaths are related to lifestyle disease. An unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, and smoking are the three main lifestyle behavior risk factors. An estimated €700 billion (70-80%) of all health care costs in the EU are spent on managing chronic disease. Additionally, 23.5% of people who are unable to participate in the workforce are suffering from chronic conditions. (1),(2)
Despite these sky-high numbers, the EU is only spending 2.8% of its average healthcare expenditure on preventive care (3). Those numbers are worrisome, as upcoming pandemics and increasingly sedentary lifestyles will put further pressure on the healthcare system's capabilities.
The causes of unhealthy diet
The food landscape in Europe changed drastically in 1950 when agriculture was modified through new machines, fertilizers, and pesticides. (4) The launch of the first Common Agriculture Policy (1962) by the European Economic Community aimed to ensure food security and protect the European population from hunger experienced during and after the Second World War. Prioritizations of calories over nutritional value, drastic reduction of agrobiodiversity, and favoritism of big-scale farming operations are just some of the outcomes of the Green Revolution that must be reversed in the XXI century. Monoculture food production and other unsustainable management practices lead to the degradation of 60-70% of soils in the European Union. (5) This environmental crisis leads to a loss of more than 50 billion euros per year in the EU.
Alongside this farming transition, powerful supermarkets rose their domination in food retail. In the Netherlands, 79% of food in Dutch supermarkets does not meet the requirements of the National Dietary Guidelines (the Wheel of Five). (6) Meanwhile, a healthy diet become inaccessible for a growing population, as 26% of citizens from disadvantaged neighborhoods suffer from food insecurity in the Netherlands. (7)
Aligning Healthcare and farming incentives
United Nations declared 2030 as a decade of action. The goal is to encourage policymakers, businesses, and community leaders to undertake ambitious strategies and projects that target the root cause of chronic disease and soil degradation.
New forms of supporting farmers with sustainable land management practices via financial incentives, agronomic advisory, and new markets must be implemented at regional, national, and European scales. Here are some examples of tangible actions that will lead to a system transition:
Rewarding nutritional yield per hectare via CAP: Using financial incentives to reward farmers who produce food richer in vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals and free of pesticide residue would benefit human and environmental health.
Supporting farm-to-healthcare models: creating innovative supply chains to source local food directly to hospitals, senior houses, and community-based healthcare models can boost the local economy and drastically lower healthcare costs by accelerating recovery time and lowering hospitalization admissions. Tufus University calculated that delivering ‘medically tailored’ meals could avoid 1.6 million hospitalizations annually and save nearly 13.6 billion dollars annually in the USA. (8)
Incentivizing food prescriptions by health insurance: providing access to healthy local food to people - as some pioneering insurance companies are doing in the US - can support patients in reversing their diet-related diseases, where poverty and lack of financial means to access healthy food is one of the risk factors.
Regenerative agriculture = future-proof profitability
The growing business models rewarding farmers for soil regeneration provide additional financial benefits of investing in sourcing from farmers who implement suitable farming practices. Carbon and - possibly shortly - biodiversity credits are an example of financial rewards from which a company or an institution can benefit.
A lot of effort is put into decarbonizing the healthcare industry. Procuring food from farms sequestering carbon dioxide is a real strategy to lower industry emissions.
Healthy soil = Healthy Plants = Healthy People
Based on the science and business aligned with it, food has to become an integral part of the mainstream healthcare approach. This transition will have a catalytic effect on many industries. But what's most important is that it has the potential to save many lives and restore millions of hectares of depleted soils.
Sources:
Towards better prevention and management of chronic diseases
Lifestyle Disease: An Economic Burden on the Health Services
Structural monitoring of the Dutch food environment is needed
Food insecurity in Dutch disadvantaged neighborhoods: a socio-ecological approach
'Medically tailored' meals can avert hospital stays, save billions, study says