The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is approaching governments to ask them to account for the hidden $10 trillion annual environmental, social, and health costs of the global food system, shows a report published Monday.
FAO makes the case for more detailed analysis by governments of the “true costs” of the food supply chain, followed by policy action, in the report The State of Food and Agriculture.
“We hope this starts a debate in terms of thinking about, how do you make agrifood systems more sustainable and healthy,” said Andrea Cattaneo, leader of the team that produced the report.
“We are bringing together these different elements and trying to monetise them, to give an order of magnitude of how important these are,” Cattaneo told Carbon Pulse.
The report suggested that more than 70% of the hidden costs were rooted in the effects of unhealthy diets on obesity, diseases, and productivity losses.
One-fifth of the total costs – or $2 trillion annually – were related to the environment, the report claimed, while acknowledging it had underestimated the figures due to data limitations.
Low-income countries were the hardest hit by hidden costs, despite high- and middle-income countries generating 75% of them, it said.
The 144-page report is the first to break down the unseen costs of the food system at national level, FAO said, estimating results for 154 countries.
For example, for the UK total, concealed costs exceeded $255 billion across seven categories, FAO estimated.
These included:
- Climate: $6.917 bln
- Blue water withdrawal: $77 mln
- Land: $32.274 bln
- Nitrogen: $14.654 mln
- Agrifood worker poverty: $32 mln
- Disease related to undernourishment: Not available
- Disease related to dietary patterns: $201.467 bln
WORKING WITH COUNTRIES
FAO hopes countries will respond to its preliminary estimates by working out how they can improve on them, Cattaneo said.
Switzerland, among other countries, is working with FAO to try to do this, while Canada and the Rockefeller Foundation in the US have previously done studies involving true cost accounting, he said.
A second report will follow next year with more assessments of countries showing the best ways to mitigate their hidden costs. Cattaneo said he hoped the double-report approach with comparable results would encourage governments to engage with them.
“How do we rethink food systems? We need to solve environmental, health, and social problems. Depending on what country you’re in, these things will have a different level of importance,” said Cattaneo.
“We’re preparing country profiles that we’ll share with policymakers mostly to build awareness. Let’s work together on figuring out these costs, and what can be done to address them.”
ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS?
The environmental costs in the report were “underestimated”, as the study did not include key impacts such as pesticide exposure or land degradation.
Although the report estimated environmental issues made up just one-fifth of hidden costs in 2020, Cattaneo stressed it was not saying climate and nature did not matter. Climate costs alone made up $1 trillion annually, he said.
“We make the case in the report that these are estimates that need to be improved. The order of magnitude is there, but it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact value.”
“A big effort of the report was providing uncertainty estimates. The uncertainty estimates on the environment are quite high, because we don’t really know how to measure, for example, nitrogen deposition at a very specific level.”
The portion taken up by environmental issues of total hidden costs could increase from 20% to 40% when other costs are accounted for, he said.
Should the report approach gain traction, Cattaneo would like to expand its coverage by asking countries to gather information on nature-related issues such as pollinators, he said.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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