Socially optimal diets and levels of ecosystem services in Norway’s food system

Dietary shifts are needed to improve public health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they may conflict with other ecosystem services provided by agriculture, such as landscape aesthetics and biodiversity. This paper identifies socially optimal diets and levels of ecosystem services from agriculture. Norway, which has highly ambitious policy goals in these areas, serves as a case study. We extend a partial equilibrium social welfare maximizing model of the Norwegian agricultural sector and include monetary health effects of dietary changes and ecosystem service provision in the model’s objective function. With mean estimates of health benefits, the optimal consumption of red and processed meat aligns closely with national guidelines and the EAT Lancet diet. Potential negative impacts of less red meat production on ecosystem services can be partially mitigated through changes in farm management and shifts in the production mix. However, socially optimal diets are highly sensitive to uncertainty in health benefit estimates.