Over the last years, we have not only been experimenting with knowing and showing hidden costs, but also with true price transactions in our partners’ canteens and stores. This movement is growing and, and as it reaches a larger scale, to safeguard its integrity, it’s crucial to have a unifying vision and define clear principles on what true price payments are and are not, and how funds that are collected should be put to use. This document presents our vision, principles and guidance on how true price payments can be a tool to address the hidden social and environmental costs embedded in value chains
This background paper of the Impact Economy Foundation and True Price Foundation to the Flagship The State of Food and Agriculture 2023 of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO) introduces true cost accounting (TCA) as an approach to measure and value the costs and benefits generated by agrifood systems in order to facilitate improved decision-making. The paper is based on a systematic review of existing TCA approaches and of relevant case studies in agrifood systems. Guidance on conducting TCA is provided, especially in relation to data collection. The paper ends with a discussion on scaling and harmonizing TCA for agrifood systems transformation.
The recent development of true cost accounting (TCA) methodologies by various organizations has helped increase transparency in the food sector, but has also made it difficult to compare the results obtained through different methodologies. This article published in nature food reviews major TCA methodologies across five functional unitis that their assessment framework(s) apply to: product, organization, system, geography and investment. Results show that the bulk of existing frameworks apply to products and/ or organizations.
Ensuring sustainable food systems requires vastly reducing its environmental and health costs while making healthy and sustainable food affordable to all. One of the central problems of current food systems is that many of the costs of harmful foods are externalized. At the same time, the benefits of healthful foods are not appreciated. This paper sets out the results of an analysis to determine the current cost of externalities in the food system and the potential impact of a shift in diets to more healthy and sustainable production and consumption patterns.
© 2024 True Price Foundation | Van Diemenstraat 292 | 1013 CR | Amsterdam | The Netherlands
The True Price Foundation is a Public Benefit Organisation (Dutch: Algemeen Nut Beogende Instelling, ANBI) and complies with the ANBI Conditions.