How helpful are the “hidden costs of food systems” numbers?

Abstract

The “hidden costs of foods systems” calculations reported by the Food and Land Use Coalition, the Food System Economic Commission and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization may not provide helpful policy guidance for the transformation of food systems for both economic and political reasons. Economically, the hidden costs numbers exclude countervailing social benefits which imply unavoidable trade-offs across policy objectives. They also aggregate costs that are fundamentally different in their economic character and require different policy approaches, while including some costs that are not attributable to food systems at all. Politically, the headline numbers risk impeding transformative change because they identify food systems participants – particularly farmers –in terms of the damage they inflict while ignoring critical benefits they confer, and implicate them in social failings for which they are not primarily responsible. However, the hidden costs numbers can be useful if integrated into a more balanced assessment of the performance of food systems. Such an approach could support a positive agenda which engages the actors whose contributions will be indispensable.