Agriculture is considered a nexus issue on which the future of global sustainability, health
and the environment depend. Although, the environmental impact of agriculture is well
established, the potential human health impacts of agriculture are less well understood
and quantified, despite their potential to hinder or undermine global health and development
efforts.
In this thesis, using gold standard methods from the medical sciences, epidemiology, and
industrial ecology, I explore the impacts of agricultural land use and trade on infectious
diseases risks. Through conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis, I quantify the
association between occupational or residential exposure to agricultural land uses and being
infected with a pathogen using Southeast Asia as a focal model system (Chapter 2). I
further extend these evidence synthesis methods to other geographical regions and integrate
meta-analytic estimates with burden estimation methods and input-output analysis to
calculate the global human infectious disease impacts of agricultural production and trade
(Chapter 3). To address the possibility of spatial autocorrelation and confounding within
agriculture-disease relationships, I focus on childhood malaria in sub-Saharan Africa as a
case study. Here, I assess the relationships between agricultural land use and malaria
whilst controlling for socio-economic and environmental confounders using hierarchical
modelling (Chapter 4). Finally, I summarise the main findings of my research, synthesise
the added value of the research conducted and highlight future research opportunities
(Chapter 5).
To combat agricultural land use and trade induced infectious disease risks, governments
must acknowledge and address the human health impacts involved with the production
of agricultural commodities. The findings from this thesis provide decision makers with
a number of impactful recommendations on how public health, development, economic
and environmental practitioners can jointly respond to mitigate the negative health impacts
of agricultural production and trade. This can aid governments in securing co-benefits
and mitigating trade-offs when trying to achieve multiple sustainable development goals
simultaneously.