Land use, common agricultural policy subsidies, and farm economic exposure under planetary health diet scenarios in Europe: a physical input–output modelling analysis

Background: Animal-sourced food (ASF) production dominates agricultural land use in the EU and attracts a large share of public fiscal support. As such, shifts away from ASFs have broad implications for land use, public spending, and farming livelihoods, yet distributional effects across regions and supply chains remain largely unquantified. Methods: We assess the effects of adopting the Planetary Health Diets (PHDs) across the EU+UK relative to a 2020 baseline. We link farm income and labour accounts to agricultural supply, use, and trade, to trace feed-animal-food linkages through supply chains using the multi-regional input-output model FABIO. We summarize regional heterogeneity using six transition archetypes defined by sectoral compositions, profitability excluding subsidies, and reliance on livestock. Findings: Adopting the PHD would vacate 58-78 Mha of agricultural land in the EU+UK and free €28-36 billion yr-1 of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies, under increasingly plant-rich variants of the PHD. Correspondingly, EU-wide farm employment and farm profits excluding CAP subsidies decline by 37-40% and 15-3%, respectively. Effects are uneven: where livestock production is loss-making in the baseline (excluding CAP), reduced ASF demand removes these losses and can raise regional profits; where livestock production is profitable, profits are eroded. Interpretation: Dietary change creates large land and fiscal repurposing space, but transition costs are concentrated in specific production systems and geographies. Repurposing CAP savings and tailoring support to regional archetypes could support a plant-rich, just food transition and better align agricultural spending with public health, climate, and biodiversity objectives.