agricultural economics Agricultural economics is an applied field of economics concerned with the application of economic theory in optimizing the production and distribution of food and fiber products. Agricultural economics began as a branch of economics that specif ...

and

development economics Development economics is a branch of economics which deals with economic aspects of the development process in low- and middle- income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic development, economic growth and structural ...

, Bennett's law observes that as incomes rise, people eat relatively fewer calorie-dense starchy staple foods and relatively more nutrient-dense meats, oils, sweeteners, fruits, and vegetables. Bennett's law is related to

Engel's law Engel's law is an economic relationship proposed by the statistician Ernst Engel in 1857. Even though Engel's law was proposed roughly 160 years ago, it holds relevance today in the context of poverty, especially the reduction of poverty. For ...

, which considers the relationship between rising household incomes and total food spending.

History

The concept of the declining "starchy-staple ratio" originated in Merrill K. Bennett's 1941 paper, "International Contrasts in Food Consumption." The first published attribution of the concept to Bennett and naming as Bennett's law appears in the proceedings of a 1959 conference held by the

American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

Contemporary use and implications

Bennett's law is now a "well-established stylized fact" referenced in university textbooks, reports of the

FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...

and the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

, and many global

food system The term food system describes the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture. A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: grow ...

models. It has particular relevance to the

Nutrition Transition Nutrition transition is the shift in dietary consumption and energy expenditure that coincides with economic, demographic, and epidemiological changes. Specifically the term is used for the transition of developing countries from traditional die ...

. One implication of Bennett's law is that global demand for animal-based foods is predicted to increase more rapidly than human population growth. Alternative dietary proposals such as the EAT-Lancet Commission's " Planetary diet" and new alternative protein technologies have developed in response to this predicted growth in global demand for animal-based foods. Because animal-based foods are generally considered to have larger environmental impacts than plant-based foods, Bennett's law suggests that, holding other factors constant, the environmental impacts of agricultural production will increase in absolute and relative terms as economies continue to grow. By adopting processes of "sustainable intensification" in agriculture, it has been argued that these environmental impacts could be greatly lessened.

References

{{Population Economics laws Eponyms Consumer theory