“A new study in Nature Food explores how these food emissions taxes could be applied to countries around the world with different levels of wealth and greenhouse emissions. It shows how they could be tweaked to manage the delicate interplay between food prices, poverty, hunger, and health—while still cutting billions of tons of annual emissions.” (Bouyssou et al., 2026; Fox, 2026) More specifically, “A global tax on food emissions, mostly from meat and dairy, could cut them by 17 percent. Charging rich nations up to $969 per ton of CO2, and poor ones as little as $21, would protect the hungry.” (Fox, 2026)
Background
“Food accounts for a third of humanity’s greenhouse emissions. And sure enough, the most carbon-gushing foods are also the ones that tend to be the worst for our health, such as meats and dairy. So, what if we tried taxing that carbon, to nudge people toward higher-plant diets that are healthier for people and planet alike?” (Bouyssou et al., 2026; Fox, 2026)
“Economists have estimated that growing populations and increasing meat consumption worldwide could cause the environmental footprint of our food—including greenhouse emissions—to balloon by 50 to 90 percent by 2050….”
“In the new study, researchers used economic, trade, and public health models to predict how well different types of taxes would curb greenhouse emissions—and also, how they would impact food prices and human health around the world.”
“The authors “compared two tax scenarios. In one, emissions are priced the same worldwide, at a constant cost of USD$ 185 per metric ton of CO2 equivalent (tCO2eq). In this system, wealthy countries would still pay more taxes, because their food systems emit more tons of CO2. In the other system, the cost-per-ton of emissions is scaled up or down, based on each country’s wealth—thereby further increasing the taxes paid by consumers in wealthy countries (to as much as $969 per tCO2eq), while reducing those paid by lower-wealth countries (to as little as $21 per tCO2eq).” (Fox, 2026; Bouyssou et al., 2026)
The researchers compared these two scenarios both with and without a second provision, in which governments would also subsidize fruits and vegetables to further lower the prices that consumers pay for these low-carbon foods.” (Bouyssou et al., 2026; Fox, 2026)
“Their results suggest that taxes based on a fixed-price-per-ton would reduce food-related emissions most sharply—by up to 18.7 percent, or about 2.6 billion tCO2eq worldwide each year. But such taxes would likely worsen overall health in some countries such as India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam—even after accounting for reductions in heart disease and diabetes—because they might make food less affordable to some people, compromising nutrition.” (Fox, 2026; Bouyssou et al., 2026).
“The authors found that adjusting the price-per-ton of emissions based on national wealth would lessen this problem. And subsidizing the cost of fruits and vegetables would further decrease it. Together these two tweaks slightly reduced the emissions that were prevented—but they were still predicted to cut worldwide food emissions by 17 percent, or about 2.3 billion tCO2eq per year.”
“The authors recommended that these efforts to reduce the negative impacts on the poor could be further explored, with detailed studies of poverty in individual countries, and potentially by excluding some critical sustenance foods such as fish or rice from the taxes in some countries.” (Fox, 2026; Bouyssou et al., 2026).
References
Bouyssou, C.G., Springmann, M., Clora, F. et al. Food emissions taxes can deliver health and environmental benefits with limited leakage. Nature Food. 2026;7:949–959. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-026-01429-7
Fox D. What’s the fairest way to tax a hamburger? Anthropocene Magazine. October 30, 2026. Available at: https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2026/10/whats-the-fairest-way-to-put-a-carbon-tax-on-a-hamburger/
