Economic analysis of food self-sufficiency: modeling and application to the case of Israel

We develop a partial equilibrium model to assess the agro-economic implications of food self-sufficiency policies aimed at reducing a developed country’s exposure to shocks in the world food markets. We apply the model to Israel, a country with a high dependence on food imports, rapid population growth, and a vegetative agricultural sector specializing in fresh fruit and vegetable production subject to land, labor, and water constraints. We simulate different levels of self-sufficiency, measured in relation to the vegetative food products recommended for consumption by the EAT–Lancet Commission (Willett et al. 2019). We find that, under Israel’s population and agricultural production resources in 2019 (our baseline year), the country can self-supply the EAT–Lancet vegetative diet, although not all nutritional intakes (particularly fat, energy, and protein) recommended by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (IMNA 2005) will be met. Increasing self-sufficiency requires shifting agricultural resources from the production of fresh vegetative products to more storable—and therefore more importable—products such as cereals, oils, fats, legumes, seeds, and nuts. Because such crops consume less water and labor than fruits and vegetables, land remains the main resource constraining self-sufficiency. We show that self-supply of the vegetative dietary needs of Israel’s forecasted population over the coming decades will necessitate expanding the country’s agricultural land resources and/or maintaining large stocks of storable-food products. Achieving high levels of self-sufficiency would inflict pronounced welfare loss, particularly to the farming sector. Consequently, subsidies to incentivize self-sufficiency would entail significant governmental expenditures.