Food prices may be soaring but we’re still not paying the true cost of food. New research by the CGIAR Initiative on Nature-Positive Solutions is generating knowledge that will inform policies and investments to sustainably help countries deal with the environmental and social downsides of food systems without increasing price pressure on food.

By Sean Mattson, CGIAR Initiative on Nature-Positive Solutions (NATURE+)

CGIAR Sept. 4 2023

It doesn’t matter where you live. There is no escaping rising food prices. Assuming you can still find physical ones instead of QR code versions, restaurant menus have telltale stickers with handwritten higher numbers. Supermarket shelves are filling up with packaged food that may appear to be roughly the same price, but with less content, a sneaky practice called shrinkflation. Market headlines report the lowest prices for grains futures in several months, but yearslong trends suggest we’re returning to the time before the mid-2000s market shocks The Economist forebodingly heralded as “The end of cheap food.” The same cheap food that has such significant negative effects on our soils, our biodiversity, our climate and on people’s health is not cheap anymore.

Following global trends, food inflation is finally abating (though it remains stubbornly high) in food-stressed countries like Kenya and Vietnam. But the cumulative impact remains staggering, and income hasn’t grown in step with what the poorest households spend an outsized proportion of their budget on: eating.

See more details:

https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/what-is-the-real-cost-of-food-nature-ifpri-aim-to-add-up-a-reality-based-food-bill/