The real cost of food

At the Green Week in Berlin, Nature & More launched its True Cost of Food initiative, a campaign to include all the external costs of food production in the price. The idea that food prices should reflect the true cost of food, including the less obvious but no less important impact on the environment and society, is not a new one, but it is far from the current reality. Food has never been cheaper than it is today. Berlin-based retailer BioCompany was selected as the launching partner, and Nature & More is intent on making information about the true cost of products such as grapes, pears and pineapples available at point of sale.

BioCompany CEO Georg Kaiser commented: "We are thrilled to be the first food store in the whole of Germany to communicate the real costs of food. The first results confirm the choice we have made: organic is the way to go. If you look at the numbers, it becomes crystal clear that conventionally produced food should be considerably more expensive than organic food,” he said. “We can now show how big the difference really is. To make this transparent, we developed a communication tool, the True Cost Flower of Nature & More. This allows the consumer to see it at a glance.”

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the hidden costs of conventionally produced food amount to 700 billion US$ in environmental damage and 900 billion US$ in social costs.