By Jeanne Yacoubou, MS

The Vegetarian Resource Group received an email inquiry in May 2020 from a PhD student in Food, Agriculture & Resource Economics. He asked: “…In preparing for a PhD next year, I’m working on research around the economic impacts of plant-based diets, e.g., consumption, production, externalities, trends, etc. Would you have any suggestions for papers or people in this area? Insight greatly appreciated!”

The VRG responds:

There has been a significant increase in the popularity of plant-based diets during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Many consumers are trending away from meat, partly due to a perceived shortage of animal-based foods.

General Information on Plant-Based Economics

Here are recent articles on this phenomenon from Bloomberg and Vox.

Also for background, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published a 2018 article that contains several links to important studies on plant-based economics.

The WEF also explores the category it calls Agriculture, Food, and Beverage Industries with extensive listings of resources and articles.

Vegan Business Resource

For a business-focused look, Vegconomist is a good place to start.

Historical Reference on Plant-Based Economics

The academic journal titled Ecological Economics is a good source. You will find many research articles dealing with the types of issues in plant-based economics that you’re analyzing.

Here is a scholarly paper by Carlsson-Kanyama, et al., titled “Food and life cycle energy inputs: consequences of diet and ways to increase efficiency” that provides historical perspective.

Recent Economics Research on Plant-Based Diets

This 2016 article written by M. Springmann, et al., titled “Analysis and valuation of the health and climate change cobenefits of dietary change” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, considers economic aspects, as well health and environmental impacts, of plant-based diets.

Here are some other scholarly articles, all by the same research team:

Lusk & Norwood (2009) Some economic benefits and costs of vegetarianism published in Agricultural and Resource Economics Review.

In 2012, Lusk & Norwood published Speciesism, altruism and the economics of animal welfare in the European Review of Agricultural Economics.

Along with other researchers, Lusk & Norwood published a 2019 study in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics titled An experiment on the vote-buy gap with application to cage-free eggs.

This information may also be of interest.
https://www.vrg.org/nutshell/faq.htm#poll
https://www.vrg.org/nutshell/market.htm