The State of Meals and Agriculture (SOFA) report confirmed that hidden prices of getting meals from farm to desk quantity to roughly $12 trillion yearly.
Of this quantity, roughly 70 per cent – $8 trillion – arises from unhealthy dietary patterns and are linked to NCDs, which far exceeds the prices associated to environmental degradation and social inequalities.
True value of meals
SOFA 2024 builds on final yr’s version, which discovered that hidden prices surpassed $10 trillion, to offer much more in-depth evaluation.
Researchers used true value accounting to show the complete vary of prices and advantages related to meals manufacturing, distribution, and consumption, together with the so-called “hidden prices and advantages” which aren’t mirrored in market costs.
The report particulars how world hidden prices are largely pushed by hidden prices associated to well being, adopted by environmental hidden prices, in additional industrialized agrifood methods.
In analyzing well being impacts, 13 dietary danger components have been recognized, which embody not consuming sufficient entire grains, fruits, and greens; extreme sodium consumption; and excessive consumption of pink and processed meats.
A girl who fled violence within the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, exhibits the wheat that she farmed in Al Dabbah within the north of the nation.
Variations throughout methods
The report additionally reveals how hidden prices manifest in numerous agrifood system sorts worldwide, which traditionally have transitioned from conventional to industrial, with assorted outcomes.
Researchers used a framework to categorize them into six distinct teams – protracted disaster, conventional, increasing, diversifying, formalizing, and industrial – thus permitting for a focused understanding of their distinctive challenges and alternatives.
Environmental impacts, social prices
The environmental affect of unsustainable agricultural practices additionally contributes considerably to the hidden value burden, the report stated.
Prices related to greenhouse gasoline emissions, nitrogen runoff, land-use modifications, and water air pollution are significantly excessive in nations with diversifying agrifood methods, reaching an estimated $720 billion.
Though formalising and industrial agrifood methods additionally encounter important environmental prices, nations dealing with protracted crises bear the very best relative environmental prices, equal to twenty % of their Gross Home Product (GDP).
In the meantime, poverty, undernourishment and different social prices are most prevalent in conventional agrifood methods and people affected by protracted crises, representing eight and 18 per cent of their GDP, respectively.
Recent fruit and veggies are displayed on the Boqueria market in Barcelona, Spain.
Transformative change
SOFA 2024 requires collective motion to remodel agrifood methods and make them extra sustainable, resilient, inclusive, and environment friendly.
FAO Director-Basic Dongyu Qu confused that this shift is prime to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“The alternatives we make now, the priorities we set and the options we implement will decide our shared future,” he stated.
