Understanding the True Costs of Food: Evidence, Methods and Policy Approach

The Food System Transformation Group at the University of Oxford is hosting an afternoon event to showcase four contributions it led to the EU Horizon Europe and UKRI FOODCoST project, focused on measuring and addressing the hidden environmental and health costs of food systems.

Some of the tools are already being used by the FAO and national actors for discussion of economic risk in national studies of food system transformation, but the event will highlight other recommendations from the project and the tools generated.

The event will describe the contribution to how food system externalities - from greenhouse gas emissions and land use to diet‑related disease - can be consistently measured and the unique challenges in addressing them through economic policy. Data and tools, available on Zenodo and Github, from the project will be discussed.

Presentations will cover:

(i) a global dataset of marginal environmental and dietary health costs under future socioeconomic pathways to used in global and national economic cost-benefit studies of food system transformation;

(ii) an assessment of how EU policy instruments internalise food system externalities, pathways of least cost abatement for food systems, and the role of institutions.

(iii) a database of over 480 datasets for true cost accounting of food systems; and

(iv) metrics for corporate financial reporting linking corporate food portfolios to population health and productivity tested in a case study with Danone.

Each output will be presented with discussion, followed by a joint panel. The event is designed to inform food system and economic cross-discipline research, uses and dissemination of the tools, and economic risk and food policy.

A drinks reception will follow the event.

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Host or Publisher Food Systems Transformation Group