The True Costs of Food Campaign started in Europe

Organic specialist Eosta and Nature & More has entered collaboration with a large number of customers to make the true costs of regular fruit and vegetables visible for European consumers, according to Fresh Plaza. The groundbreaking campaign has now been launched by retailers and natural food stores in the Netherlands (EKoplaza), Germany (Alnatura, Denn's), United Kingdom (Langridge wholesale), Sweden (Fruktbudet), Finland (SOK supermarket) and later this season in Denmark (Årstiden, DANSK) and Belgium (Bioplanet).

Nature & More says that a lot of regular fruit and vegetables that are available at the moment in the EU are too cheap, as they hide the costs of a negative impact on the environment and social cohesion (we reported earlier). Advice bureaus write thick sustainability reports for companies, but the hidden costs on a product level aren't made known to consumers. At least, that was the situation until now. Nature & More is now sharing this information in collaboration with organic retail partners to convince consumers that organic food isn't expensive, regular food is too cheap.

The costs of these effects can now be calculated. In 2014 the WFO of the UN developed a method on calculating the hidden costs of the food production. Using this method Eosta has had the hidden climate costs calculated for non organic pears in Argentina, 3144 Euro per hectare per year. The hidden costs for water pollution and soil erosion are 752 Euro and 1163 Euro per hectare respectively. Tax payers have to pay the cost of the government cleaning the water, irrigation subsidies or costs pushed through to the future. Those costs will be paid by our children in the end - with interest.

Video interview with Volkert Engelsman, CEO of Eosta and Nature&More