Dr Dorisel Torres-Rojas

Scale Matters: Why National and Subnational Food System Models Are Essential for Policy

Global food system models shape international debates on land use, trade, and climate mitigation, but their scale limits their use for policy action. Household and community studies capture local detail but rarely scale up to inform national planning. Between the two lies a persistent gap: few countries have national, subnational disaggregated models built to translate food system evidence into decisions policymakers can use. This gap matters because national averages mask subnational variation in production, diets, and economics, and that variation is exactly where policy decisions get made and implemented. Closing this gap requires models built at the scale where policy operates. National and subnational modeling makes the trade-offs behind a policy decision explicit and open to interrogation, rather than folding them into a global average or burying them in local case studies that never scale up. New Zealand's KAMA model is one example of what this middle tier can deliver in practice. Getting this middle tier right is what allows food system evidence to move from academic debate into decisions governments can implement.