5 ms·

Gap between national food production and food-based dietary guidance (2025)

89 points by simonebrunozzi 5mo ago

shrubby 5mo ago
Nationalist food security, at least here in Finland, seems really paradoxical as the main focus seems to be animal production, with imported feed.
- kyykky 5mo ago
  Maybe that’s the only category that can make a profit here?
  - shrubby 5mo ago
    I don't think it is making profits? Heavily subsidized and farmers are hurting.
jemmyw 5mo ago
New Zealand appears to be missing from the map. Hard to know in this case if we're missing for the usual reason or because we have no food production gap.
- DavidSJ 5mo ago
  Given that many of the depicted countries list as having "sufficient production", I guess it's for the usual reason.
  - anitil 5mo ago
    For those wondering what the usual reason is - https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/
    - rf15 5mo ago
      That is just a subreddit, I don't really see where it describes the problem. Anyway: It's because on the Mercator projection, it is a small point in the bottom right that easily gets overlooked or accidently cropped out.
      - PinkMilkshake 5mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_of_New_Zealand_from_maps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_of_New_Zealand_from_m...
      - anitil 5mo ago
        You're right I should have explained rather than throwing a link. Poor Tasmania suffers the same fate, even among Australians though I think the reason is more cultural
- dwd 5mo ago
  Haha I would think New Zealand would be in a similar situation to Australia. Australia would be fine - we export 2/3 of our produce so have no problem. This study doesn't seem to account for trade, consumer choice and price differentials world-wide. We don't grow some produce because it's easier/cheaper to import and any local producer may struggle on price, unless they can differentiate on something else like organic. As for fish, we prefer to maintain sustainable local fish stocks, and choose import. We're screwed on coffee and chocolate.
  - femto 5mo ago
    > As for fish, we prefer to maintain sustainable local fish stocks, and choose import. There's hard evidence for this in the form of a map [1]. The light pixels close to the Australian coastline are Australian vessels fishing close in. The solid light areas further from the coast are other countries' vessels stripping the ocean bare. It's particularly obvious to the north east of Australia, where the solid line is the edge of Australia's exclusive economic zone. Minimal activity (dark) inside the zone, being stripped bare (light) outside the zone. China may be listed as self-sufficient in fish, but its fish are not coming from near China [2]. Mind you, Australia's not helping if it's just buying from countries that are stripping stocks. [1] https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/index?longitude=126.00884255644853&latitude=-6.3323821927544675&zoom=3.742998991643083 https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/index?longitude=126.00884... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-19/how-china-is-plundering-the-worlds-oceans/12971422 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-19/how-china-is-plunderi... > We're screwed on coffee and chocolate. If things get desperate, AU does have small coffee and cacao goring industries! https://www.agca.au/ https://www.agca.au/ https://www.thechocolateprofessor.com/blog/australian-cacao https://www.thechocolateprofessor.com/blog/australian-cacao
    - maxglute 5mo ago
      >China may be listed as self-sufficient in fish, but its fish are not coming from near China PRC fishing is ~85% domestic aquaculture. THE HIGHEST RATIO OF SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE IN THE WROLD. Of 15% remaining wild catch, ~50% is from east sea, i.e. PRC coast. So ~95% self sufficiency. ~98% including SCS, i.e. PRC definition of sovereign waters. Functionally, self sufficiency is at 100%, since PRC large aquaculture exporter. All the distant fishing drama/propaganda is just 2-5% of PRC fishing, which per capita they underfish relative other major fishing distant water fishing actors like JP, SKR, TW, Spain etc. For reference PRC distant water catches like 1.5kg per capita, the others 3-30kg+, i.e. 2-20x PRC. TLDR is PRC is the largest aquaculture producer (absolute&relative) that also grossly under extracts from global commons relative to other DWF, unless one thinks PRC citizens entitled to less fish.
- lucumo 5mo ago
  NZ is (famously) often cut off from maps. Surprisingly, The Netherlands is missing on this map too. It's not just missing data: Germany and Belgium gained a lot of North Sea shore. I was actually interested in the Netherlands, because my country has for the last 80 years followed policies with the express focus of never having a food shortage again, even during world wars. It's agricultural output is insane for a country with its surface area.
  - stinos 5mo ago
    Surprisingly, The Netherlands is missing on this map too. Very strange indeed. It's agricultural output is insane for a country with its surface area. Isn't that, just like in Belgium, mostly so for meat and derived products? Which also happens to be one of the worst situations (of natural food production) ecologically: grow and import a ton of corn and soy, export again, and in the meantime all the pesticides and methane and nitrogen and manure etc are left in your country.
    - dbcooper 5mo ago
      The Netherlands is almost legendary for its agricultural productivity. Its greenhouse operations were the model for NZ capsicum production and other efforts. It also leads food science research in some areas. Wageningen is perhaps the best in that field.
    - RetroTechie 5mo ago
      s/meat/dairy Worldwide, dairy & meat are big drivers in climate change, as well as other ecological problems. The NL has a front row seat there. :-( Eg. quality of surface waters is about the worst among EU countries. Imho the NL would be a better country without its dairy industry: land to re-purpose for growing other crops, increase nature and/or recreational areas, reduce a host of ecological issues, etc. At the cost of a vanishingly small part of our GDP. But alas - dairy industry, its suppliers & their lobby is a powerful one. So change is slow to come and only if/where absolutely necessary.
- magicbuzz 5mo ago
  NZ does well though: fruits, dairy, meat, vegetables and legumes Says a bit about Nature reviewers if the paper misses out a country that would have impact on the key points in the abstract
pelcg 5mo ago
This makes me sad to see this. The economic implications of this is catastrophic and unfortunately people who are in the middle of warzones get squeezed and suffer from famines.
esperent 5mo ago
> Fish and seafood self-sufficiency is particularly low across most regions This seems like an impossible requirement to meet for landlocked countries. I didn't see how deep they go here: for example, Ireland ranked higher than I expected, because of a lot of dairy and meat production. But how much of the cattle feed is imported? According to this article, "Ireland imports around 80 percent of its animal feed, food, beverages, and other agri-food products". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Ireland I haven't examined the source link to see if that's fully accurate, but if it's even mostly true, and that import collapsed, it would be a catastrophe. It's not enough just to label a country as producer/not producer for a category but rather whether that production is fully stable and internalized in case of disasters/war. My guess is that the results in the study should look worse for many of the countries listed.
- chromacity 5mo ago
  > This seems like an impossible requirement to meet for landlocked countries. Why? There's plenty of freshwater fish that are farmed around the world. Trout, tilapia, etc. > It's not enough just to label a country as producer/not producer for a category but rather whether that production is fully stable and internalized in case of disasters/war. Conversely, many industrialized and wealthy countries can probably shift their production pretty easily. For example, looks like Hungary is doing well on fruit but not on vegetables. This is probably not because it's hard for them to grow vegetables, just that there's no economic incentive to. Similarly, the two-way legumes / veggies difference between the US and Mexico probably boils down to free-market economics or government subsidies more than to any real agricultural bottlenecks on either side.
  - rf15 5mo ago
    > There's plenty of freshwater fish that are farmed around the world. Trout, tilapia, etc. Not to a level that could feed the entire country, surely.
    - chromacity 5mo ago
hagbard_c 5mo ago
I had a look at the maps in the article and noticed they somehow managed to forget the Netherlands, the #2 exporter of agricultural products in the world. This makes me wonder about the quality of the rest of the article given that Nature, once a journal of note has rapidly gone down the ideologically biased slide like many other publications and as such lost a lot of credibility.
- Cthulhu_ 5mo ago
  I was wondering about that because it doesn't make sense given how small a country it is. It's a bit of creative bookkeeping, ultimately: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2026/03/value-of-agricultural-exports-up-by-over-8-percent-in-2025 https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2026/03/value-of-agricultural-... The biggest export product is dairy and eggs; I get that, most of our country feels like it's pastures lmao. And eggs / chicken farms are relatively compact, not sure what they feed them though. But second is "cocoa and cocoa preparations"... the Netherlands cannot grow cocoa itself, wrong climate, so this is all processed imported raw materials as well as re-exported cocoa beans. Third is "horticultural products", so that's all the flowers and tulip bulbs coming from the greenhouses and tulip fields, but also keep in mind a lot of that is grown in e.g. Africa and just passes through. We're in a strategic location, sea access, rivers going deep into Europe, and we have a lot of trade connections, is the gist of it. Oh and good cows / pastures.
  - fransje26 5mo ago
    Ah yes.. The country of plofkip disappearing into water and steam as you cook it, of south-american chicken re-labeled as a dutch product, and the country of absolutely tasteless, hard-as-rock tomatoes as a great export product. A quick cycling tour through any of the greenhouse areas will quickly remind you why such an agricultural model is maybe not the greatest of ideas.. The lingering chemical smell is all telling.
  - myrmidon 5mo ago
    Dismissing the dutch agricultural output as "creative bookkeeping" goes waaaayy too far IMO. Your own article distinguishes local production and re-exports and those make up less than half.
contingencies 5mo ago
At https://infinite-food.com/ https://infinite-food.com/ we've spent ten years targeting food distribution efficiency with robotics. Now raising for GTM with multiple simultaneous order of magnitude improvements over legacy operations. To put it bluntly, we will print money: scaling initially at the same rate as the fastest QSR historically attested, and accelerating from there. Raising $100M, $30M spoken for, looking for a $50M lead.
- swiftcoder 5mo ago
  Are you really likely to find big vending machine investors in a global food security thread?
  - contingencies 5mo ago
    You'd be surprised! Thesis-driven investors exclusively monitor specific areas looking for edge. I've already met with groups like Cargill who approached me while still in Shenzhen. They really are ear to the ground.
jongjong 5mo ago
As an engineer I'm too busy processing spreadsheets with AI to concern myself with the menial task of food production.
jcarrano 5mo ago
How much of the fish self-sufficiency of China is due to them plundering the seas across the globe?
alpineman 5mo ago
That's what massive subsidisation of the meat and dairy industry gets you over the long run
swiftcoder 5mo ago
Very interesting. I would not have expected my home, Spain, to fail at fish and starch. Living in northern Spain where fishing and potato farming are big business gives one a warped perspective apparently.
ericpauley 5mo ago
Food groups seem like such a strange way to quantify this, especially given that production of several of the food groups is a net macronutrient destroyer. The macronutrient story is far more telling. For instance my math says (based on 17B bushel annual production) that the US produces 11,400 calories and 250g protein per person, per day, just in corn. The vast majority of this is used for animal feed and ethanol. Whether resorting to eating just corn and multivitamins is a good life could be debated, but it's silly to suggest (as the paper figures do) that the US has a food security issue.

Nationalist food security, at least here in Finland, seems really paradoxical as the main focus seems to be animal production, with imported feed.

kyykky 5mo ago
Maybe that’s the only category that can make a profit here?
- shrubby 5mo ago
  I don't think it is making profits? Heavily subsidized and farmers are hurting.

jemmyw 5mo ago

New Zealand appears to be missing from the map. Hard to know in this case if we're missing for the usual reason or because we have no food production gap.

DavidSJ 5mo ago
Given that many of the depicted countries list as having "sufficient production", I guess it's for the usual reason.
- anitil 5mo ago
  For those wondering what the usual reason is - https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/
  - rf15 5mo ago
    That is just a subreddit, I don't really see where it describes the problem. Anyway: It's because on the Mercator projection, it is a small point in the bottom right that easily gets overlooked or accidently cropped out.
    - PinkMilkshake 5mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_of_New_Zealand_from_maps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_of_New_Zealand_from_m...
    - anitil 5mo ago
      You're right I should have explained rather than throwing a link. Poor Tasmania suffers the same fate, even among Australians though I think the reason is more cultural
dwd 5mo ago
Haha I would think New Zealand would be in a similar situation to Australia. Australia would be fine - we export 2/3 of our produce so have no problem. This study doesn't seem to account for trade, consumer choice and price differentials world-wide. We don't grow some produce because it's easier/cheaper to import and any local producer may struggle on price, unless they can differentiate on something else like organic. As for fish, we prefer to maintain sustainable local fish stocks, and choose import. We're screwed on coffee and chocolate.
- femto 5mo ago
  > As for fish, we prefer to maintain sustainable local fish stocks, and choose import. There's hard evidence for this in the form of a map [1]. The light pixels close to the Australian coastline are Australian vessels fishing close in. The solid light areas further from the coast are other countries' vessels stripping the ocean bare. It's particularly obvious to the north east of Australia, where the solid line is the edge of Australia's exclusive economic zone. Minimal activity (dark) inside the zone, being stripped bare (light) outside the zone. China may be listed as self-sufficient in fish, but its fish are not coming from near China [2]. Mind you, Australia's not helping if it's just buying from countries that are stripping stocks. [1] https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/index?longitude=126.00884255644853&latitude=-6.3323821927544675&zoom=3.742998991643083 https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/index?longitude=126.00884... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-19/how-china-is-plundering-the-worlds-oceans/12971422 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-19/how-china-is-plunderi... > We're screwed on coffee and chocolate. If things get desperate, AU does have small coffee and cacao goring industries! https://www.agca.au/ https://www.agca.au/ https://www.thechocolateprofessor.com/blog/australian-cacao https://www.thechocolateprofessor.com/blog/australian-cacao
  - maxglute 5mo ago
    >China may be listed as self-sufficient in fish, but its fish are not coming from near China PRC fishing is ~85% domestic aquaculture. THE HIGHEST RATIO OF SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE IN THE WROLD. Of 15% remaining wild catch, ~50% is from east sea, i.e. PRC coast. So ~95% self sufficiency. ~98% including SCS, i.e. PRC definition of sovereign waters. Functionally, self sufficiency is at 100%, since PRC large aquaculture exporter. All the distant fishing drama/propaganda is just 2-5% of PRC fishing, which per capita they underfish relative other major fishing distant water fishing actors like JP, SKR, TW, Spain etc. For reference PRC distant water catches like 1.5kg per capita, the others 3-30kg+, i.e. 2-20x PRC. TLDR is PRC is the largest aquaculture producer (absolute&relative) that also grossly under extracts from global commons relative to other DWF, unless one thinks PRC citizens entitled to less fish.
lucumo 5mo ago
NZ is (famously) often cut off from maps. Surprisingly, The Netherlands is missing on this map too. It's not just missing data: Germany and Belgium gained a lot of North Sea shore. I was actually interested in the Netherlands, because my country has for the last 80 years followed policies with the express focus of never having a food shortage again, even during world wars. It's agricultural output is insane for a country with its surface area.
- stinos 5mo ago
  Surprisingly, The Netherlands is missing on this map too. Very strange indeed. It's agricultural output is insane for a country with its surface area. Isn't that, just like in Belgium, mostly so for meat and derived products? Which also happens to be one of the worst situations (of natural food production) ecologically: grow and import a ton of corn and soy, export again, and in the meantime all the pesticides and methane and nitrogen and manure etc are left in your country.
  - dbcooper 5mo ago
    The Netherlands is almost legendary for its agricultural productivity. Its greenhouse operations were the model for NZ capsicum production and other efforts. It also leads food science research in some areas. Wageningen is perhaps the best in that field.
  - RetroTechie 5mo ago
    s/meat/dairy Worldwide, dairy & meat are big drivers in climate change, as well as other ecological problems. The NL has a front row seat there. :-( Eg. quality of surface waters is about the worst among EU countries. Imho the NL would be a better country without its dairy industry: land to re-purpose for growing other crops, increase nature and/or recreational areas, reduce a host of ecological issues, etc. At the cost of a vanishingly small part of our GDP. But alas - dairy industry, its suppliers & their lobby is a powerful one. So change is slow to come and only if/where absolutely necessary.
magicbuzz 5mo ago
NZ does well though: fruits, dairy, meat, vegetables and legumes Says a bit about Nature reviewers if the paper misses out a country that would have impact on the key points in the abstract

pelcg 5mo ago

This makes me sad to see this. The economic implications of this is catastrophic and unfortunately people who are in the middle of warzones get squeezed and suffer from famines.

esperent 5mo ago

> Fish and seafood self-sufficiency is particularly low across most regions This seems like an impossible requirement to meet for landlocked countries. I didn't see how deep they go here: for example, Ireland ranked higher than I expected, because of a lot of dairy and meat production. But how much of the cattle feed is imported? According to this article, "Ireland imports around 80 percent of its animal feed, food, beverages, and other agri-food products". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Ireland I haven't examined the source link to see if that's fully accurate, but if it's even mostly true, and that import collapsed, it would be a catastrophe. It's not enough just to label a country as producer/not producer for a category but rather whether that production is fully stable and internalized in case of disasters/war. My guess is that the results in the study should look worse for many of the countries listed.

chromacity 5mo ago
> This seems like an impossible requirement to meet for landlocked countries. Why? There's plenty of freshwater fish that are farmed around the world. Trout, tilapia, etc. > It's not enough just to label a country as producer/not producer for a category but rather whether that production is fully stable and internalized in case of disasters/war. Conversely, many industrialized and wealthy countries can probably shift their production pretty easily. For example, looks like Hungary is doing well on fruit but not on vegetables. This is probably not because it's hard for them to grow vegetables, just that there's no economic incentive to. Similarly, the two-way legumes / veggies difference between the US and Mexico probably boils down to free-market economics or government subsidies more than to any real agricultural bottlenecks on either side.
- rf15 5mo ago
  > There's plenty of freshwater fish that are farmed around the world. Trout, tilapia, etc. Not to a level that could feed the entire country, surely.
  - chromacity 5mo ago

hagbard_c 5mo ago

I had a look at the maps in the article and noticed they somehow managed to forget the Netherlands, the #2 exporter of agricultural products in the world. This makes me wonder about the quality of the rest of the article given that Nature, once a journal of note has rapidly gone down the ideologically biased slide like many other publications and as such lost a lot of credibility.

Cthulhu_ 5mo ago
I was wondering about that because it doesn't make sense given how small a country it is. It's a bit of creative bookkeeping, ultimately: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2026/03/value-of-agricultural-exports-up-by-over-8-percent-in-2025 https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2026/03/value-of-agricultural-... The biggest export product is dairy and eggs; I get that, most of our country feels like it's pastures lmao. And eggs / chicken farms are relatively compact, not sure what they feed them though. But second is "cocoa and cocoa preparations"... the Netherlands cannot grow cocoa itself, wrong climate, so this is all processed imported raw materials as well as re-exported cocoa beans. Third is "horticultural products", so that's all the flowers and tulip bulbs coming from the greenhouses and tulip fields, but also keep in mind a lot of that is grown in e.g. Africa and just passes through. We're in a strategic location, sea access, rivers going deep into Europe, and we have a lot of trade connections, is the gist of it. Oh and good cows / pastures.
- fransje26 5mo ago
  Ah yes.. The country of plofkip disappearing into water and steam as you cook it, of south-american chicken re-labeled as a dutch product, and the country of absolutely tasteless, hard-as-rock tomatoes as a great export product. A quick cycling tour through any of the greenhouse areas will quickly remind you why such an agricultural model is maybe not the greatest of ideas.. The lingering chemical smell is all telling.
- myrmidon 5mo ago
  Dismissing the dutch agricultural output as "creative bookkeeping" goes waaaayy too far IMO. Your own article distinguishes local production and re-exports and those make up less than half.

contingencies 5mo ago

At https://infinite-food.com/ https://infinite-food.com/ we've spent ten years targeting food distribution efficiency with robotics. Now raising for GTM with multiple simultaneous order of magnitude improvements over legacy operations. To put it bluntly, we will print money: scaling initially at the same rate as the fastest QSR historically attested, and accelerating from there. Raising $100M, $30M spoken for, looking for a $50M lead.

swiftcoder 5mo ago
Are you really likely to find big vending machine investors in a global food security thread?
- contingencies 5mo ago
  You'd be surprised! Thesis-driven investors exclusively monitor specific areas looking for edge. I've already met with groups like Cargill who approached me while still in Shenzhen. They really are ear to the ground.

jongjong 5mo ago

As an engineer I'm too busy processing spreadsheets with AI to concern myself with the menial task of food production.

jcarrano 5mo ago

How much of the fish self-sufficiency of China is due to them plundering the seas across the globe?

alpineman 5mo ago

That's what massive subsidisation of the meat and dairy industry gets you over the long run

swiftcoder 5mo ago

Very interesting. I would not have expected my home, Spain, to fail at fish and starch. Living in northern Spain where fishing and potato farming are big business gives one a warped perspective apparently.

ericpauley 5mo ago

Food groups seem like such a strange way to quantify this, especially given that production of several of the food groups is a net macronutrient destroyer. The macronutrient story is far more telling. For instance my math says (based on 17B bushel annual production) that the US produces 11,400 calories and 250g protein per person, per day, just in corn. The vast majority of this is used for animal feed and ethanol. Whether resorting to eating just corn and multivitamins is a good life could be debated, but it's silly to suggest (as the paper figures do) that the US has a food security issue.