The Hidden Costs of Food

accumulated since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016

The counter shows the accumulated hidden costs of our current food systems since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016, taking into account greenhouse gas emissions, blue water use, land use conversion, nitrogen emissions, undernourishment, poverty, and dietary risk.

6 seconds

The amount of time it takes for the counter to rise by $1,000,000

14 days

The time it takes the counter to accumulate the wealth of Elon Musk

80 hours

The time it takes to generate enough to vaccinate the entire world against Covid

The Hidden Costs of Food

Today’s food system has profound implications on the climate, biodiversity, social and economic inequality, human health, and our ability to ensure healthy, environmentally sustainable, and economically accessible food for all people on the planet.

Learn more

Financial Costs

Health care costs

Costs of lost labor

Translating the number

How many FIFA World Cup stadiums could you build for a days’ worth of hidden food costs?

How long does it take the counter to accumulate enough money to fund a manned moon landing program?

How much would you have to reduce the hidden costs by to cover the damages of Cyclone Yaas in a single day?

20 percent

One of the worst weather disasters of 2021, Cyclone Yaas, led to $3,000,000,000 in damages and forced more than 1.2 million people to evacuate⁴. While the lives of the 20 people lost cannot be restored, reducing the hidden costs of food could go a long way to cover the monetary cost of the cyclone. In fact, reducing the hidden costs of food by 20 percent for a single day would be enough.

What can be done

Numbers such as these, about the state of the climate and systems of inequality, can be overwhelming and a cause for anxiety. A major cause for anxiety is often the feeling of doom, without solutions, without action. Calculating this number is only FSEC’s first step. What comes next is series of policy bundles and pathways. An essential part of FSEC’s research is to equip citizens, governments, policymakers, and economic decision makers with the tools needed to take action to change the current path, and transform food systems to be more economically just, stay within planetary boundaries, and provide healthy food for all.

For more information on how to cope with climate anxiety, see this article by Harvard Health Publishing (external link), the consumer health education division of Harvard Medical School.

Disclaimer

While derived from scientific research, all content included on the FSEC website is approximate and is intended for general communications purposes only. The data are collected from official documents including AQUASTAT, Ecosystem Service Valuation Database, EDGARv5, European Nitrogen Assessment, FAOSTAT, FAO The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 report, Food System Economic Commission SPIQ-FS marginal damage cost model, Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (GBD 2019) Results. Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), HILDA+, ILO labour productivity data, IMAGE-GNM spatial data sets, Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG) SCGHG simulations, the IPPC shared socioeconomic pathway SSP2, WHO, the World Bank June 2022 Global Economic Prospects report, the World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform, and the World Bank Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report 2018 and 2020.

The Hidden Cost Counter does not endorse or support any political movement or lobby group. It has been calculated through independent, scientific research, with the sole aim of providing clear and up-to-date information about the increasing hidden costs associated with the global food system.

Our partners

The Food System Economics Commission is a joint initiative of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Food and Land Use Coalition, and EAT. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Food and Land Use Coalition are lead research partners and EAT is the lead communications and engagement partner.