Last month we were thrilled to speak at the groundbreaking 2025 True Cost Accounting Accelerator Summit organized by the TCA Accelerator—a Global Alliance Allied Initiative—and hosted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in their Rome headquarters.
True Cost Accounting is a powerful tool to understand trade-offs and dependencies and expose the range of costs and benefits—including those typically hidden—from food production, distribution, and consumption.
The summit, which brought together decision-makers, business leaders, civil society, and researchers, showed that momentum to implement TCA to transform food systems by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development goals, is growing.
It is encouraging to see how far we have come. In 2015 the Global Alliance worked with the United Nations Environment Programme to convene over 150 scientists from 33 countries to develop The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture and Food initiative and, in 2018, the TEEBAgriFood Framework. This framework created a universal, inclusive, and comprehensive true cost accounting approach to describe the range of diverse and complex food and agriculture systems. In 2023 and 2024, the FAO’s State of Food and Agriculture reports put True Cost Accounting (TCA) on the agenda of decision makers around the world.
The low cost of cheap food hides a bigger truth. According to the FAO, the invisible costs of the world’s food system total a staggering USD$11.6 trillion annually. Seventy percent of this is related to poor health outcomes, largely from hyperpalatable, convenient, and cheap ultra-processed food.
But cheap food is insidious. We pay for it in the trillions spent on diet-related diseases and other negative impacts. In addition to making us ill, industrial food systems are driving ecological and climate devastation. These negative costs show up in the 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions agriculture produces, biodiversity loss, the ecological and health effects of hazardous chemicals, the 2.5 billion adults who suffer diet-related illnesses, and in unjust labor conditions of workers in the food sector which puts profit over people. Our corporate controlled food system fails the 733 million people who live in hunger and 2.8 billion people unable to afford a healthy diet.
Information about food often focuses on individual responsibility and choice, blurring the big picture and the need for systemic responses to systemic issues. We must turn this discourse upside down by addressing the structures in place—policies, incentives, and resources—and how they enable, or not, people, communities, and entire nations to make better decisions.
Last month’s summit took forward many important issues to understand how to scale out implementation, address barriers to change, and build on existing successes:
1. Moving from development to implementation
There is agreement that we need to move from research and frameworks to implementation. Recently, the practical application of these tools has increased and the results are compelling. For instance, this TCA studyin Andhra Pradesh, India, found that compared to chemical intensive farming, natural farming practices increased crop yields and doubled farmers’ incomes. With significant government subsidies going to agriculture, understanding which practices deliver the best return—and not just in yields or profits but overall soil health, sustainability, and farmers income in the long term—is one of the best ways to implement TCA.
2. Putting a price tag on people and nature
Approaches to TCA have sometimes faced criticism for putting a dollar value on the benefits and negative effects in food systems. The monetization of natural, social, and human capital, where necessary and possible, is easier to communicate, compare, and comprehend for decision-makers. For instance, in Zambia, a TCA studyof the social enterprise Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) calculated the total value of their sustainable practices were nearly US$427 million a year by avoiding costs to land degradation and deforestation. But understanding the risks of ignoring or mis-estimating non-monetary factors related to cultural, political, and social change is important to ensure there is a holistic analysis.
3. Whose data counts
Related to the above, TCA requires robust data and evidence for decision-making. But data isn’t just numbers and spreadsheets. It’s farmer and traditional knowledge, and the knowledge of community-society organizations and the people or communities that they work with. A narrow view of what counts as evidence means that certain kinds of expertise are elevated over others and a broad array of evidence is not included, documented, published, or heard. Integrating different types of knowledge, as we state in our report Politics of Knowledge, can make the results more accurate and relevant.
4. Food prices
A common concern, and often misrepresentation, of TCA is that its advocates are calling for higher food prices. An analysis of the visible and invisible costs related to food systems naturally surfaces the true value of any food product which may be higher than the price tag. But integrating equity, health, accessibility, and justice into a true cost framework can ensure that healthy food is prioritized, affordable, and accessible—with workers compensated fairly and consumers able to make informed choices. TCA does not imply we need to increase the price of food, but we need to redesign the food system to repurpose harmful subsidies and increase public funds to support those who grow our food and towards healthy food.
At a time when it seems like the world is backtracking on climate, biodiversity, and health indicators, there are powerful examples for how to grow, procure, and eat food to reap positive benefits for everyone. As Eric Schlosser, author of the iconic ‘Fast Food Nation’ and keynote speaker at the summit, said: “…even without realizing it, I was already using a true cost analysis while writing my book years ago and it’s amazing to see this become a practical tool to help change the world.”
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Photo courtesy of Ronan Furuta, Unsplash
