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It’s a slow-news holiday week so I’m going to use it to catch up on reports.  The first:

FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture 2024: Value-Driven Transformation of Agrifood Systems

FAO uses true cost accounting (TCA) to analyze global food systems.

• ➔ By improving on the hidden costs quantified in The State of Food and Agriculture 2023, this report unpacks the health hidden costs associated with unhealthy dietary patterns linked to an increased risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
• ➔ Case studies show how targeted TCA assessments conducted across multiple agrifood systems categories provide more nuanced insights into the requisite agrifood systems transformation and potential actions moving forward.

Here is an example of the kinds of analyses presented here.

And here are the resources:

• Read the full digital report
• Read the In Brief
• Read the interactive story: Beyond the price tag
• Watch the video: State of Food and Agriculture 2024. Value-driven transformation of agrifood systems
• Read the press release: Unhealthy dietary patterns drive $8 trillion in annual hidden costs of global agrifood systems
• Read The State of Food and Agriculture 2023

Read the background papers:

• Navigating the distributional challenges of agrifood systems transformation
• The hidden costs of coffee production in the Eastern African value chains
• A typology for agrifood systems
• Potential of crop diversification to address the hidden costs of major crop value chains in Central Asia
• Refining national true cost accounting for agrifood systems
• Hidden costs of agrifood systems
• How to reduce agrifood systems’ future hidden costs? A multi-country case study

Six items to cheer your holiday (or not):

I.  The cost of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner (in Iowa, at least).

II.  But the pie will cost less, says USDA.

III.  How much of that cost does the farmer get?  Not much, alas.

IV.  Williams Sonoma’s guide to portion sizes.  A half to a whole bottle of wine, per person?

V.  The #FoodNotPhones Thanksgiving challenge.  No phones at the Thanksgiving table; research says 68% of Americans permit phones during dinner (thanks to Phil Lempert, the Supermarket Guru, for this one)

Join the #FoodNotPhones Thanksgiving Challenge to Put Down Your Phone During Mealtime

VI.  Thanksgiving by the numbers (I can’t vouch for these.  Here is one source, unverified).

• 40 million – The staggering number of whole turkeys that Americans gobble up on Thanksgiving day.
• 40% – The percentage of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup annual sales during Thanksgiving.
• $325 – The average American’s spending over the five-day Thanksgiving period. It’s a perfect time for gratitude and, of course, a little shopping too!
• 10 hours – The time an average male would need to spend on the treadmill to burn off the 4,500 calories consumed during a Thanksgiving meal.
• 4 – the number of small towns in the U.S. named Turkey: Turkey Creek, Louisiana, Turkey Creek, Arizona, Turkey, North Carolina, and Turkey, Texas.
• $150,000 – the price tag of the world’s most expensive Thanksgiving meal at a restaurant.

Enjoy your dinner!

Enjoy the holiday weekend.  FoodPolitics takes the day off tomorrow and I hope you get to take it off too.

I received an e-mailed news release from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) about its latest report.

The press release headline: Hidden costs of global agrifood systems worth at least $10 trillion.  154-country study makes case for true cost accounting to guide policy.

Our current agrifood systems impose huge hidden costs on our health, the environment and society, equivalent to at least $10 trillion a year, according to a ground-breaking analysis by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), covering 154 countries. This represents almost 10 percent of global GDP.

According to the 2023 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA), the biggest hidden costs (more than 70 percent) are driven by unhealthy diets, high in ultra-processed foods, fats and sugars, leading to obesity and non-communicable diseases, and causing labour productivity losses. Such losses are particularly high in high- and upper-middle-income countries.

This report, FAO says, presents initial cost estimates.  A report next year will focus on ways to mitigate these costs.  Governments, it says, “can pull different levers to adjust agrifood systems and drive better outcomes overall. Taxes, subsidies, legislation and regulation are among them.”

The FAO director says: “the future of our agrifood systems hinges on our willingness to appreciate all food producers, big or small, to acknowledge these true costs, and understand how we all contribute to them, and what actions we need to take. ”

The report urges governments to use true cost accounting to address the climate crisis, poverty, inequality and food security.

True cost accounting (TCA), according to the report is:

A holistic and systemic approach to measuring and valuing the environmental, social, health and economic costs and benefits generated by agrifood systems to facilitate improved decisions by policymakers, businesses, farmers, investors and consumers.43

Translated, this means trying to assign numbers to the externalized and hidden costs of food production and consumption, meaning not just what you pay at the cash register but also the costs you pay in other ways for health care, animal welfare, biodiversity, polluted water and soil, and climate change.

These, says this report, add up to about $12.7 trillion a year.

The idea is to get food producers to pay their fair share of these costs—issues of accounting and accountability (according to the Scientific Group of the UN Food Systems Summit). 

The report comes with a big collection of resources:

• Read the full digital report
• Read the In Brief
• Read the Interactive story: Beyond the price tag
• Watch the Video: State of Food and Agriculture 2023. Revealing the true cost of food to transform agrifood systems
• Read the press release: Hidden costs of global agrifood systems worth at least $10 trillion

Read the background papers:

• Hidden costs of agrifood systems and recent trends from 2016 to 2023
• Revealing the hidden costs of agrifood systems to enhance their value
• Accounting for the hidden costs of agrifood systems in data-scarce contexts
• The role of true cost accounting in guiding agrifood businesses and investments towards sustainability
• True cost accounting applications for agrifood systems policymakers

That should be plenty to keep us all busy for quite a while.  Enjoy and ponder.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), as part of its IFAD Research Series, released a report, Overweight and obesity in LMICs in rural development and food systems, along with a literature review.

The report finds obesity rates across developing countries to be approaching levels found in high-income countries.

The study attributes the rise to:

• Food Prices: The price gap between healthy foods (expensive) and unhealthy foods (inexpensive) is greater in developing countries than in rich developed countries.
• Diet: Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is on the rise in developing countries and the global sales of highly processed foods rose from 67.7kg per capita in 2005 to 76.9kg in 2017.
• Culture: In some developing countries, childhood fatness is associated with health and wealth and consumption of unhealthy foods carries prestige.
• Gender: Women are more likely to be overweight or obese than men in nearly all developing countries.

One strength of this study is its consideration of the need for interventions across the entire food system:

The study results show that food system-related interventions are not overweight or obesity specific. Instead, they tap into the wider field of making diets more healthy and nutritious, and emerge as necessary strategies to set the scene for creating non-obesogenic food supply chains. The identified intervention strategies cut across different food system domains: there were production strategies for improved dietary diversity, strategies for processing (which involved food package labelling or price mechanisms), strategies for changing the food environment and strategies to address consumer behaviour.

I received an emailed announcement alerting me to today’s big event: It’s National Peanut Brittle Day, “a day dedicated to honoring one of our favorite uniquely American treats.”

Who knew?

The press release continues with some not-so-sweet news:  peanut brittle is yet another victim of inflation.

The chart shows the cost of the raw ingredients in peanut brittle has increased by nearly 18% — from just under $0.38 per pound in early 2021 to nearly $0.46 cents today.

Other cost increases: transportation, energy, labor add up to “a recipe for expensive candy!”

A strange press release, but an interesting commentary on what’s happening with prices.

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Let’s start with this good thought:

The Farm Bureau has released its annual survey of the cost of Thanksgiving dinners, and the results will not surprise anyone who has been to a grocery store lately: up by a whopping 20%.

Food Politics will be back on Monday.  Enjoy the holiday!

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For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

The headline says it all: Kroger to acquire Albertsons for $24.6bn solidifying its position as #2 grocery retailer with 11.8% market share.

This will make Kroger second only to Walmart’s 17.1% share.

Take a look at what this means.

The Kroger Co. Family of Stores

• Baker’s
• City Market
• Dillons
• Food 4 Less
• Foods Co
• Fred Meyer
• Fry’s
• Gerbes
• Jay C Food Store
• King Soopers
• Kroger
• Mariano’s
• Metro Market
• Pay-Less Super Markets
• Pick’n Save
• QFC
• Ralphs
• Ruler
• Smith’s Food and Drug

Now add in the Albertsons Companies’ Family of Stores

• Albertsons
• Safeway
• Vons
• Jewel-Osco
• Shaw’s
• Acme
• Tom Thumb
• Randalls,
• United Supermarkets
• Pavilions
• Star Market
• Haggen, Carrs
• Kings Food Markets
• Balducci’s Food Lovers Market

All of these will now be Kroger’s.  Monopoly capitalism, anyone?

Kroger’s press release says:

Kroger has a long track record of lowering prices, improving the customer experience and investing in its associates and communities. Consistent with prior transactions, Kroger plans to invest in lowering prices for customers and expects to reinvest approximately half a billion dollars of cost savings from synergies to reduce prices for customers. An incremental $1.3 billion will also be invested into Albertsons Cos. stores to enhance the customer experience. Kroger will also build on its recent investments in associate wages, training and benefits. Kroger has invested an incremental $1.2 billion in associate compensation and benefits since 2018. The combined company expects to invest $1 billion to continue raising associate wages and comprehensive benefits after close.

Who will hold Kroger accountable for these promises?

It needs to be held accountable.

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The USDA has produced three reports on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on consumers.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to significant changes in U.S. consumers’ food-spending patterns in early 2020, with a return to pre-pandemic spending patterns that continued through 2021.

While closures of restaurants and nonessential businesses contributed to record unemployment increases during March and April 2020, unemployment fell to below pre-pandemic levels by December 2021.

Although income and employment have improved, some U.S. households continue to face difficulties obtaining adequate food, particularly in the face of increasing food prices.

It has produced data and charts in three areas.

• Food Spending During the Pandemic: 
• Food Prices During the Pandemic
• Food Sufficiency During the Pandemic: The Household Pulse Survey

Here’s one of the charts, this one on prices.

This is the kind of thing the USDA’s Economic Research Service is supposed to be doing.  I’m glad they are back on the job.