The best social sector solutions are the ones that address multiple challenges at once. Food systems transformation touches on many different global crises: climate, health, nutrition, economic self-determination, even the pandemic. However, for decades, the cooperatives, social entrepreneurs, small farmers, and government agencies working to build sustainable, healthy food systems have been doing so with one hand tied behind their backs. We are competing in a skewed marketplace with misguided incentives, to produce the most possible food at the cheapest price, regardless of the impacts on climate, health, workers’ rights, or equitable distribution.

“True Cost Accounting” (TCA) helps to level the playing field, as well as serving as proof of concept that food systems transformation can accelerate progress across a host of global challenges. True Cost Accounting is a decision-making approach that captures the positive and negative impacts that food systems have on the economy, the environment, and society. TCA has its origins in ecological economics, which emerged in the 1970s, and expands traditional economic accounting systems of aiming to identify externalities, including cost-benefit analysis.

With growing awareness about the need to measure and count the hidden costs of our food systems in full, it has become possible to calculate the true cost and value of food, a policy and business-making approach that could scale impact and drive innovation across diverse sectors. What we’ve learned from 10 years working to develop TCA, and from our assessment of food systems initiatives around the world, is that transformation is already happening, and True Cost Accounting is a tool to make it visible.

Read the full article about improving food systems by Alexander Müller and Ruth Richardson at Stanford Social Innovation Review.