洛克菲勒基金会发布报告measuring the true cost of food in the United States. According to the report, the true cost of food is nearly US$3.2 trillion a year–triple what American consumers currently spend on food. These hidden costs come from the impact of the food system on society and the environment.
Dr. Roy Steiner, Senior Vice President for the Food Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation tells Food Tank, “What we’re trying to do is help the world understand that when we pay for food, there’s a whole bunch of costs associated with that food that actually reduces its value. Another way to think about it is what’s the true value of that food? And it’s not just what you pay at the grocery store, it’s all these associated costs that society, taxpayers, and others have to pay.”
真正的成本会计（TCA）可以是工具用于评估食品系统的环境和社会成本，而不是反映在产品价格中。尽管美国联邦政府估计，2019年美国消费者在食品上花费了1.1万亿美元，但该价格仅包括生产过程和销售食品。TCA帮助研究人员了解，通过衡量与饮食相关疾病的医疗保健成本，温室气体（GHG）排放的影响等，食物的成本要高得多。
According to the report, one of the greatest costs associated with the food system is from the healthcare sector. The government spends a combined US$1.145 trillion per year addressing diet-related diseases including obesity and diabetes, as well food insecurity and the impact of pollution on health. “The largest part of the true cost of food is the health burden and, in many ways, we don’t need to be paying that amount if we eat better and if we create a food system that is nourishing rather than one that is just focused on cheap calories,” Steiner tells Food Tank.
The report also finds that these healthcare costs disproportionately burden Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. “BIPOC communities tend to have far worse diet-related diseases than white communities and part of that is because we created this low-cost, high processed food environment,” Steiner tells Food Tank.
Compared to white Americans, Black Americans suffer from significantly higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and food insecurity. At the same time, Black Americans are also exposed to 25 percent more air pollution than the national average, and 41 percent more than white Americans. And rates of diabetes in Latinx Americans is 1.7 times higher than in white Americans.
Steiner解释说，绝大多数食品工人都是Bipoc，他们倾向于面对更严格的工作条件和更少的好处。与白人美国人相比，这导致对有害化学物质（如肥料和农药）的暴露率明显更高。土著美国人面临减少水和卫生的可能性的19倍。
The TCA analysis finds that the costs to the environment make up around US$805 billion per year. GHG emissions from food production and plastics, as well as land use and land transformation—all of which will burden future generations—account for almost US$580 billion of those costs. The report also highlights several areas that were not valued in the published results, such as food waste, which另一项研究estimates to cost Americans around US$240 billion per year.
斯坦纳指出，已发布的结果相当保守。“我们并没有珍视许多我们都知道的事情，就像食品系统中的不平等一样，或者我们具有潜在的抗生素抗性能力。这些不是零，但是我们没有可辩护的方法来衡量这些成本。”他说。
Steiner还认识到，消费者关注的关键领域是TCA将如何影响杂货店的食品价格。他解释说，该报告找到了一种解决食物的真实成本而不提高这些价格的方法。他告诉《食品坦克》：“我们认为，这份报告的大部分是关于重定向政府和私人公司花费的方式与增加杂货店的食品成本的方式。”w88优德老虎机平台他希望该报告和其他TCA报告将刺激政府，决策者和投资者重新考虑采购做法，以避免减轻消费者的负担。
“我们可以更改接受[采购食品]合同投标的公式。例如，一个州出价这种食物，但实际上食品是在州以外生产的，具有巨大的碳足迹，也是较低的健康成分。” Steiner解释说。使用TCA，提供了一种工具，可以采购可以改善营养的食物，对环境更好，并从长远来看降低食物的真正成本。
“我会喜欢[美国农业部]要进行真实的成本会计，并使预算办公室使用真实的成本会计作为分析预算的方式，这将是一种根本的结构性变化。” Steiner告诉Food Tank。w88优德老虎机平台“您必须改变资本流动方式，政府分配公共款项的方式，这种真正的成本会计方法是帮助那些正在做出这些决定的人的框架。”
Steiner hopes this report can also improve investors’ decision-making practices. “We think this idea of true cost accounting can get embedded intoenvironmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing，因此，当投资者决定是否投资公司时，他们正在使用此框架。”他告诉Food Tank。w88优德老虎机平台
Steiner emphasizes the importance of TCA in helping institutions and companies move forward with food systems transformations. “This creates a way to be very specific about what food transformation is. That’s the reason we’re really excited about this.”
照片由Franki Chamaki提供，Unsplash
