France is the top agricultural producer in the EU, and agriculture plays a prominent role in the country's foreign trade and intermediate exchanges. However, reflecting production volumes and methods, agriculture also generates significant negative environmental and public health externalities.
This paper demonstrates that a well-designed shift to make production sustainable and align consumption with recommended values can curb these negative externalities considerably, generate large macroeconomic gains, and help deliver France’s domestic and international environment and health targets. Taken together, the overall economic gain of a shift in the French agri-food system is estimated to be between 4 and 9 percent of GDP per year. The paper also proposes a policy toolkit in line with the government’s existing sectoral policies that can support this agri-food sector transition.