Agrifood systems come with $11.6T in hidden costs driven by poor diets

The complex global web responsible for growing, processing, and transporting our food comes with numerous hidden costs, such as the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change and poor health due to less-than-nutritious diets.

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s latest flagship annual report puts an $11.6 trillion annual price tag on those health, environmental, and social costs across 156 countries. An estimated 70% of those costs — amounting to $8.1 trillion — comes from unhealthy diets linked to noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

This year’s report — called the State of Food and Agriculture and known in the development sector as SOFA — gives a refined estimated price tag that builds on last year’s report about the same topic. It also offers more nuance about the costs for individual countries.