i.e., in tissue culture. Both of these require constant vigilance and are labor- and cost-
intensive. Furthermore, as growing plants or plantlets, they are exposed to greater
risks from contamination and disease, and safety duplication is also a major chal-
lenge. These factors all make collections of such crops particularly challenging to
safeguard, especially when access to them is significantly reduced, e.g., because of
social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cryopreservation is the optimal method for safely maintaining genetic resources of such crops in the long-term. It is a process whereby organic material is conserved by cooling it to very low temperatures, typically –196 °C, using liquid nitrogen. It is a form of conservation that is technically challenging and requires high upfront investment. However, it is the most effective, long-term complement to the labor-intensive methods of conservation in field genebanks and *in vitro*.

Unfortunately, while there are abundant studies on how to cryopreserve plant genetic resources, only a handful of institutes have succeeded in cryopreserving collections on a large scale. This is due to the lack of investment in transforming research into routine application. Protocols need to be highly refined to work on the range of diversity in global collections and adequately tested to ensure that materials going into cryopreservation can come out of it and grow into healthy, whole plants. The organization required to build a successful cryo-pipeline is considerable, demanding both substantial investment and a donor who is not afraid to wait to see good results.

CGIAR genebanks have now established cryopreservation pipelines in Peru, Belgium, Nigeria and Colombia. More than 4,000 accessions of banana, cassava and potato are maintained in CGIAR cryobanks. The Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT) in Fiji is also in the process of setting up a cryopreservation pipeline for taro and coconut. However, more than 100,000 accessions are believed to be conserved in *in vitro* and field collections worldwide. Consequently, CGIAR is working with the Crop Trust and the Plant Treaty to engage national partners and cryopreservation experts in collaborating on a global initiative to secure this diversity in long-term conservation. Through setting up regional specialist hubs, CGIAR and partners hope to offer capacity-building and backstopping to support national programs bringing their own collections into cryopreservation and safely duplicating them.

## 4.3 Innovative Funding for the Global System of Ex-Situ Conservation

The Crop Trust was founded in 2004 and is recognized as an essential element of the funding strategy of the Plant Treaty. It provides sustainable, long-term funding for a rational, effective and efficient global system that can secure crop diversity forever.

The core activities of the Crop Trust are funded through sustainable investment income generated from an endowment fund. To strengthen the global system of
*ex-situ* conservation as described above, an additional US$500 million need to be raised to achieve its total endowment target of US$850 million that will ultimately support implementation of SGD 2 by securing the world's crop diversity in perpetuity.

Unrestricted grant contributions to this endowment fund will always be the preferred means of funding the global system of *ex-situ* conservation. However, due to the slow growth of official development assistance and declining grants from governments, it is necessary and urgent for the Crop Trust to tap additional sources of funding.

The Crop Trust is exploring the issuance of a 30-year bond (“Food Security Bond” or “FSB”) to private sector investors, which would be supported by (1) a government guarantee that commits the government to provide for any shortfall upon redemption in Year 30, and (2) government grants to pay the bond coupon in order to reduce the cost to the Crop Trust to zero. All bond proceeds would be invested in the existing endowment fund, with net investment returns to be used to fund the conservation of crop diversity in genebanks. In order for the FSB to be a success, it is absolutely critical that it has government support from one or more donor countries.

Overall, the advantages of issuing such a bond, combined with firm support from governments by way of guarantees and grants, include the following:

* Public/private engagement – The FSB has the potential to engage private market investors and government donors in a combined effort to support the global system and the conservation of crop diversity in perpetuity.

* The rating of the issuer – the higher the credit rating, the better the pricing in terms of the cost of funds. A highly rated government guarantee will mean lower coupons to be paid by the Crop Trust.

* The market environment – low interest rate market environments create the demand for yield up to and above current short-term issuances. Lack of alternatives to satisfy the needs of a section of investors, particularly pension funds and insurance companies, creates a demand profile for long/ultra-long maturity bonds.

* The guarantee provided by governments – a bond profile enhanced by a guarantee provides a layer of comfort for the investor and an attractive proposition to the market on behalf of the issuer, resulting in potential demand enhancement. For no money upfront, governments can help unlock substantial private capital for food security.

* The profile of the issuer – environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are now one of the foremost attributes of investors and the need for them to gain exposure to ESG-related asset classes. In addition, as investors focus on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, a Crop Trust bond supporting SGD 2 would be highly attractive to investors. The Crop Trust is also a signatory to the UN Principles of Responsible Investment and all endowment fund assets are invested in line with its responsible investment policy.
* Scalability – the bond could be issued in a number of tranches to raise vital funding, not just for the Crop Trust, but for other international organizations implementing SDG 2.

* Risk – as there is no recourse to donor contributions within the endowment fund, the risk of a shortfall upon redemption of the bond lies with the governments who have provided the guarantee, and not with the Crop Trust.

With this funding, the Crop Trust aims to scale up the endowment fund to provide critical support to national and regional genebanks around the world; continue support for routine budgets of the 11 CGIAR genebanks; and fund information system development, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and the Crop Trust Secretariat with the aim of securing the foundation of global food security.

In addition, discussions are underway with the Secretariat of the Plant Treaty to explore whether a share of the annual income earned from this additional funding could be made available to the Plant Treaty for complementary activities to safeguard crop diversity in the field and in the wild.

## References

* FAO – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2010) The second report on the state of the world's plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. FAO, Rome

* Hawtin G, Fowler C (2012) The global crop diversity trust. An essential element of the treaty's funding strategy. In: Frison C, Lopez F, Esquinas-Alcazar J (eds) Plant genetic resources and food security: stakeholder perspectives on the state of the international treaty on plant genetic resources

* Vincent H, Amri A, Castañeda-Álvarez NP, Dempewolf H, Dulloo E, Guarino L, Hole D, Mba C, Toledo A, Maxted N (2019) Modeling of crop wild relative species identifies areas globally for in situ conservation. Commun Biol 2(1):136–143

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<figure><img src="image_113.png" /></figure>
# Safeguarding and Using Fruit and Vegetable Biodiversity

<figure><img src="image_114.png" /></figure>

Check for
updates

Maarten van Zonneveld, Gayle M. Volk, M. Ehsan Dulloo, Roeland Kindt, Sean Mayes, Marcela Quintero, Dhrupad Choudhury, Enoch G. Achigan-Dako, and Luigi Guarino

## 1 Fruit and Vegetable Biodiversity Contributes to a Diverse Food Supply and Quality Diets

From a dietary perspective, fruits are reproductive plant parts with high sugar or oil content that are usually eaten fresh, as a snack, in desserts, or in drinks (Bioversity International 2021). Vegetables are plant parts, such as leaves, fruits, or immature pods, that are eaten raw or cooked, in salads and as part of savoury dishes in general

M. van Zonneveld (✉)

World Vegetable Center, Taiwan City, Taiwan

e-mail: maarten.vanzonneveld@worldveg.org

G. M. Volk

National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Fort Collins, CO, USA

M. E. Dulloo

Bioversity International, Port Louis, Mauritius

R. Kindt

World Agroforestry, CIFOR-ICRAF, Nairobi, Kenya

S. Mayes

Crops For the Future, London, UK

M. Quintero

International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Cali, Colombia

D. Choudhury

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Patan, Nepal

E. G. Achigan-Dako

Laboratory of Genetics, Biotechnology and Seed Sciences, University of Abomey-Calavi, Abomey-Calavi, Benin

L. Guarino

Crop Trust, Bonn, Germany
(Grubben and Denton 2004). What both fruits and vegetables have in common is that they are rich in micronutrients and present an astonishing diversity of forms, tastes, and colors, adapted to myriad environments. Fruit and vegetable biodiversity is part of agrobiodiversity, underpinning diverse food production systems for both local and global economies and contributing significantly to worldwide health and nutrition (Willett et al. 2019). While agrobiodiversity can be defined as the sum of all organisms at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels for food and agriculture, fruit and vegetable biodiversity can be defined more narrowly as the variety of fruits and vegetables at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels, including crop wild relatives (CWR) and pollinators and other associated organisms.

Fruits and vegetables play an increasingly prominent role in a new global research and development agenda that emphasizes nutrition and healthy diets, alongside spurring climate action, safeguarding biodiversity, ending poverty, and improving livelihoods (Willett et al. 2019; Caron et al. 2018). Even so, most fruit and vegetable biodiversity, which is the foundation for fruit and vegetable supply, remains unexplored, poorly conserved, and increasingly threatened.

About 1100 vegetable species are recognized worldwide (Meldrum et al. 2018), and there are at least 1250 documented fruit species native to Latin America alone (Bioversity International 2021), although this number is likely to be higher (Van Loon et al. 2021). The global number of fruit species is even larger when considering native species from other continents (Maundu et al. 2009).

This pool of diversity includes fruit and vegetable species with exceptionally high nutritional values and some that are adapted to harsh environments: it offers an untapped resource to make nutrient-dense foods accessible and affordable to consumers under the challenges of global climate change. Examples include micronutrient-rich African leafy vegetables adapted to rain-fed conditions (Maundu et al. 2009) and vitamin-rich Amazonian fruit trees that withstand flooding and waterlogging (Borelli et al. 2020; van Zonneveld et al. 2020a).

Below the species level, local fruit and vegetable varieties grown by people are part of a cultural heritage with unique tastes and histories (Dwivedi et al. 2019). Varieties vary widely in levels of micronutrient concentrations and phytonutrient concentrations in general, including antinutrients (Simon et al. 2009). This variation allows us to identify varieties with high nutritional quality for developing new climate-adapted varieties with novel flavors, high nutritional values, and resistance to pests and diseases. At the landscape level, wild fruit and vegetable species, including those that are actively managed, are a substantial food source for communities around the world and support key ecosystem functions (Bharucha and Pretty 2010; Van Zonneveld et al. 2018). Fruit species can serve as a direct food source, contributing up to 30% of the daily vitamin intake of rural and forest communities in certain local settings (Jansen et al. 2020). In Africa in particular, the human consumption of wild vegetables is reported in many countries (Maundu et al. 2009; Achigan-Dako et al. 2011; van Zonneveld et al. 2021). CWR, including wild ancestors of domesticated fruit and vegetable species, are a special group of genetically-related species of targeted fruits and vegetables that are increasingly used in breeding because they can contain traits related to climate resilience and
other desirable traits (Kilian et al. 2021; Schouten et al. 2019). In addition, most fruit species and some vegetable species depend heavily on pollinators for sustainable yields (Klein et al. 2007). These pollinators, together with seed dispersers, are also key to maintaining the viability of wild populations of fruit and vegetable species and their relatives.

## 2 Declining Biodiversity Limits Options for a Sustainable and Healthy Food Supply

Fruit and vegetable biodiversity continues to decline in farmers' fields and natural ecosystems (Pilling et al. 2020) in line with the global rapid decline in biodiversity (Díaz et al. 2019). The loss of this heritage, and the resulting narrowing options for developing climate-resilient and nutritious foods, as well as a yield gap due to pollinator decline, will likely limit progress in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 1, No Poverty; SDG 2, Zero Hunger; SDG 12, Responsible Consumption and Production; SDG 13, Climate Action; SDG 15, Life on Land; and any future goals set thereafter.

Globally, ecosystems in 88% of the 846 terrestrial ecoregions are poorly conserved, degraded, or disappearing in the Anthropocene (Dinerstein et al. 2017). The degradation and loss of these ecosystems under the pressures of land-use change, global climate change, and other threats leads to a decline in richness and abundance of fruit and vegetable species, CWR, and pollinators and dispersers at the landscape level (Pilling et al. 2020; Díaz et al. 2019). For example, 39% of 883 assessed wild fruit and vegetable species requires urgent conservation because they are either poorly conserved in genebanks and protected areas or not conserved at all; another 58% has a medium priority for conservation; for only 3% is genetic variation already well conserved (Khoury et al. 2019) (Table 1).

Four out of five studies on crop genetic erosion found evidence of crop diversity loss, the magnitude varying by species, taxonomic and geographic scale, and region, as well as analytical approach (Khoury et al. 2022). However, most genetic erosion studies have been done on cereal crops and their wild relatives; no global estimates

<table><caption>**Table 1** Classification of 883 wild fruit and vegetable species in priority categories for conservation actions by Khoury and co-authors as part of a global conservation assessment of wild edible plants</caption><thead><tr><td>Priority for conservation actions</td><td>Number of fruit species</td><td>Number of vegetable species</td><td>Number of species combined<sup>a</sup></td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>High</td><td>200</td><td>185</td><td>346</td></tr><tr><td>Medium</td><td>341</td><td>246</td><td>510</td></tr><tr><td>Low</td><td>11</td><td>25</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>552</td><td>456</td><td>883</td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: Khoury et al. (2019)

<footnote><sup>a</sup>Includes species that have been classified as both fruit and vegetable.</footnote>
have been made of the rate of varietal and genetic losses in fruit and vegetable species (Khoury et al. 2022). For some crops, such as tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum), farmers have already replaced most local varieties in many regions (Walters et al. 2018; Cebolla-Cornejo et al. 2012) and the development of new varieties relies almost entirely on the diversity safeguarded in genebanks (Bauchet and Causse 2012).

In contrast to tomatoes, as noted above, the genetic resources of most fruit and vegetable species are poorly conserved by genebanks or not at all. A quarter of the 1,100 recognized vegetable species worldwide is not conserved in any genebank (Meldrum et al. 2018). Similarly, the conservation of wild relatives of vegetables is poor. For example, 65% of the wild relatives of eggplant (Solanum melongena) is conserved poorly or is not conserved *ex situ* in crop genebanks and botanic gardens (Syfert et al. 2016), while 50% of the wild relatives of chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) and 25% of the wild relatives of yard-long beans and cowpeas (Vigna spp.) are poorly conserved *ex situ* (van Zonneveld et al. 2020b; Khoury et al. 2020). The varietal diversity of most fruit tree species and their wild relatives, particularly those of tropical origin, are not maintained in genebanks or botanic gardens. Botanic gardens maintain a high richness of fruit species, although not necessarily a high intra-specific diversity (Pearce et al. 2020). The seed of most fruit species is recalcitrant and does not tolerate desiccation or the low temperatures of conventional seed storage, while maintaining fruit trees in high-quality field genebanks is expensive (Dawson et al. 2013). All of these fruit and vegetable genetic resources, in the absence of genebank back-up, are at risk of being lost forever.

Over the last four decades, populations of terrestrial insects were found to have declined, on average, by 45% across several studies, and the annual decline in abundance is estimated to be between 1% and 2% (Wagner et al. 2021; Dirzo et al. 2014). These studies are thought to represent global trends of rapid decline, because insect biodiversity is affected worldwide by a multitude of pressures, including habitat destruction, pesticide application, and climate change, among others (Wagner et al. 2021). During the same time period, the mean relative yield of crops that depend on these insects for pollination was 13% lower compared to pollinator-independent crops (Garibaldi et al. 2011). This pollination-yield gap will likely further increase under the current trends of pollinator decline. It can be anticipated that this will affect the yields of the many fruit species and some vegetable species that rely on these pollinators for crop production. This decline will also further increase the extinction risk of wild plant populations, including those of fruit and vegetable species and wild relatives that depend on cross-fertilization by pollinators for propagation (Cunningham 2000; Biesmeijer et al. 2006).

Complex access and benefit-sharing policies and regulations (Brink and van Hintum 2020), in particular, domestic policies and regulations that implement the Nagoya Protocol of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), increasingly govern international efforts to conserve and use the diversity of local varieties and wild populations. Many of these policies recognize the rights of countries and local communities over genetic resources in their territories, yet these countries and
communities from different countries depend on each other for genetic resources of fruit and vegetable crops for food and nutrition, including for neglected and underutilized ones (van Zonneveld et al. 2021; Khoury et al. 2016). This interdependence is expected to increase in this century under global climate change (Burke et al. 2009). The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the Plant Treaty) has a multilateral system for a negotiated list of crops to enhance the exchange of germplasm—including seed and any other living plant tissue—between countries for food and agriculture. Unfortunately, most fruit and vegetable crops and their wild relatives are not included on this list, which limits germplasm exchange for these species (Brink and van Hintum 2020).

There are at least six important trends increasing the conservation and use of fruit and vegetable biodiversity in food systems at global and local levels. First, there is greater global awareness about the benefits of diverse diets with sufficient fruits and vegetables (Willett et al. 2019; Caron et al. 2018). Second, the proportion of fruit and vegetable crops contributing to global food production is increasing (Martin et al. 2019; Khoury et al. 2014; Gould 2017). Third, advanced biotechnologies are now accessible to public and private breeders and researchers globally for the purpose of mainstreaming the genetic diversity of fruits and vegetables into new crop varieties (Schouten et al. 2019; Jamnadass et al. 2020). Fourth, some neglected and underutilized fruit and vegetable species have regained relevance in urban diets through public and private initiatives in gastronomy and niche markets for local, healthy, or ethnic food (Borelli et al. 2020). Fifth, cities are becoming important hubs of crop diversity, because immigrants bring planting material from their home areas (Taylor and Lovell 2014; Rimlinger et al. 2021). Sixth, the coverage of protected areas has tripled in the last 40 years (Pringle 2017), and at least 35% of the terrestrial protected areas is owned and/or managed by local and indigenous communities, who play an important role in maintaining agrobiodiversity (Díaz et al. 2019).

Although these trends could possibly bend the curve of decline in fruit and vegetable biodiversity, they may not completely halt, let alone reverse, it.

For example, the expansion of protected areas provides some opportunities for conservation, but ecosystems in these areas may be degraded and wild populations of fruit and vegetable species within the landscape may decline (Pringle 2017). While cities can be hubs for new crop diversity, urban expansion is also a driver of biodiversity loss, because urban planning commonly does not consider crop biodiversity (Shackleton et al. 2017). Global increases in crop diversification with limited numbers of new crops may also lead to less use, and therefore a decline in the abundance and richness of local fruit and vegetable crops as diets tend towards becoming more homogenous globally (Khoury et al. 2014). In addition, successful national and international markets for previously underutilized species, such as cherimoya (custard apple, *Annona cherimola*) and avocado (*Persea americana*), both originating from Latin America, can lead to a decrease in local varieties in their primary centers of diversity due to product homogenization and consumer preferences (Vanhove and Van Damme 2013). While the proportion of fruit and vegetables in global food production has increased in the last decades, consumption of crops such as pineapple (*Ananas comosus*), banana (*Musa spp.*), and avocado rely on
high-input monoculture production systems that lead to excessive environmental degradation and biodiversity loss (Magrach and Sanz 2020; Shaver et al. 2015; Schreinemachers et al. 2020). Even though genetic resources are increasingly used in the production of some crops such as tomatoes, production systems of other fruit and vegetable crops remain genetically impoverished and are susceptible to pest, disease and climate stress. An extreme case is banana production, which is dominated by a single clone that is susceptible to the Panama disease, threatening the global banana supply (Ploetz 2021). Genebanks and seed saver networks where genetic resources are conserved allow people to re-introduce new and more varieties so as to make the fruit and vegetable supply more sustainable.

Policies and initiatives should stimulate the positive trends mentioned above while counteracting the negative effects with i) better conservation of fruit and vegetable biodiversity in situ (on farm, at the landscape level, and in protected areas); ii) with back-ups in genebanks and other ex-situ settings to reduce and reverse the decline of fruit and vegetable biodiversity (Dulloo et al. 2017); and iii) with sustainable use of fruit and vegetable biodiversity in production systems through good practices such as on-farm diversification and agroecological intensification (Attwood et al. 2017). This will require a global awareness campaign around safeguarding and sustainably using fruit and vegetable biodiversity and a concerted, coordinated global rescue plan.

## 3 Raising Awareness to Safeguard and Sustainably Use Fruit and Vegetable Biodiversity

Long-term support for biodiversity conservation can be gained by engaging with young people to create increased awareness about why biodiversity matters (Pringle 2017). For fruits and vegetable biodiversity in particular, governments and NGOs can engage young people and their families by showing the benefits of conserving and using fruit and vegetable biodiversity for diets and business opportunities. School-feeding programs, in combination with biodiversity education, are a promising tool for achieving this; they become successful when they involve multiple stakeholders, rely on stable procurement markets, and are embedded in national policies (Roothaert et al. 2021) (Fig. 1a). For example, government programs in Brazil use farm-to-school models to purchase fruits and vegetables of local crops from nearby producers for the purpose of offering diverse school meals and diversifying farm systems with shorter supply chains for fresh produce (Borelli et al. 2020). In this way, local crops are being maintained in local and diverse food systems. About 368 million children worldwide are estimated to be fed daily through school-feeding programs, with a yearly investment of between US$47–75 billion (WFP 2013). It can be anticipated that linking these programs and their budgets to
<figure><img src="image_115.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 1** Examples of activities to safeguard and use fruit and vegetable biodiversity: (a) Engaging young people through school-feeding programs with fresh vegetables in Burundi; (b) A traditional Thai meal with local bananas and a rich variety of vegetables; (c) A fruit vendor in Lima, Peru, holding a cherimoya fruit (Annona cherimola) of the locally-grown Cumbe variety; (d) Populations of the multi-purpose tree species néré (Parkia biglobosa) are maintained in parklands in Benin, and so far do not have a genebank back-up; (e) Cucumis spp. - a cucumber wild relative from Nyika National Park, delimited as a crop wild relatives (CWR) genetic reserve in Malawi as part of the Darwin Initiative SADC/CWR project 26-023; (f) Heirloom apple (Malus domestica) trees in Yosemite National Park in the United States are identified for conservation efforts. (Photo credits: (a) WFP, Hugh Rutherford; (b, c) WorldVeg; (d) University of Abomey-Calavi, Enoch Achigan-Dako; (e) Malawi PGR Centre; (f) USDA, Gayle Volk)</figcaption></figure>

biodiversity education and school-feeding programs will help to promote the consumption and sustainable cultivation of local fruit and vegetable crops. This requires pilots for further testing, learning, and scaling in different settings, focusing especially on the fast-growing group of young people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Cooks, chefs, and other food innovators can promote local fruit and vegetable crops as a complement to global staples among urban consumers by emphasizing the taste, cultural, and health aspects of local crops (Moreau and Speight 2019; Pereira et al. 2019) (Fig. 1b). To be successful, these efforts must be linked to value-chain development so as to increase and sustain the supply of local crops, including investment in good agricultural practices, effective postharvest management, product preservation and processing, food safety, and market access for farmers (Schreinemachers et al. 2018; McMullin et al. 2021) (Fig. 1c). These farmers need good quality, safe, and appropriate planting material. Often, this planting material is not available, which is a major bottleneck preventing farmers from adopting these local crops (McMullin et al. 2021). To develop and deliver appropriate planting material of fruit and vegetable species now and in the future, their genetic resources need to be conserved, characterized and accessible. Genebanks play a crucial role in making this germplasm available (Lusty et al. 2021).
# 4 Rescuing Fruit and Vegetable Biodiversity

A global rescue plan is needed to bend and halt the curve of decline in fruit and vegetable biodiversity. This plan should focus on crop-based conservation strategies for globally important fruit and vegetable species and include conservation actions in global hotspots that harbor high levels of fruit and vegetable biodiversity, including Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. This plan should also aim to protect wild populations of fruit and vegetable species, their relatives, and their pollinators and dispersers in natural habitats and traditional production systems.

Large national fruit and vegetable germplasm collections have been established in North America, South America, Asia and Europe (Byrne et al. 2018; Cunha Alves and Azevedo 2018; Jacob et al. 2015; Loskutov 2020). These crop genebanks conserve fruit and vegetable species and varietal diversity and make this diversity available for the development of new varieties and foods. For instance, the Vavilov Institute in Russia has a famous collection of 75,000 fruit and vegetable germplasm samples (Loskutov 2020). Australia has recently established a seed bank for native food plants (Cochrane 2017). These national efforts are complemented with international initiatives that have resulted in the collection of at least 1330 banana and 12,000 other fruit and 39,000 vegetable germplasm samples (Thormann et al. 2012; Engle and Faustino 2007), and have resulted in the establishment of international collections of banana and fruit tree germplasm at, respectively, Bioversity International and the World Agroforestry Centre, and of vegetable germplasm at the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) and the World Vegetable Center (Lusty et al. 2021; Engels and Ebert 2021). Wild relatives of fruit and vegetable crops, and neglected and underutilized fruit and vegetable species, poorly represented in this network, should be the focus of new plant explorations worldwide (Fig. 1d). Sub-Saharan Africa presents a gap in the genebank network; investment in genebank infrastructure in this region will help to maintain and document sub-Saharan African fruit and vegetable genetic resources.

At the same time, several collections from the existing genebank network are vulnerable because they have large backlogs of old or original fruit and vegetable germplasm samples (Fu 2017). These collections need investment in germplasm multiplication and rejuvenation. Without such support, there is a risk that part of this already-conserved diversity gets lost, too.

Workable agreements for germplasm access and benefit-sharing provide a framework for the better use of these collections and for new plant exploration efforts. The 2011–2021 global CWR Project led by the Crop Trust showed how global partnerships for collection, conservation, and germplasm availability are possible for wild relatives of fruit and vegetable crops that fall under the framework of the Plant Treaty including eggplant (Solanum spp.), carrot (Daucus carota), apple (Malus spp.), and bananas (Pearce et al. 2020). In this way, germplasm becomes available for farmers, breeders, and researchers under internationally established policies and regulations. Similar agreements should be made for germplasm exchange and new
plant explorations for other fruit and vegetable species following all applicable
current laws and regulations at the national and international levels.

For *ex-situ* conservation, seeds of most vegetable species are usually dried and stored at low temperatures in conventional seed banks for national and international distribution and long-term conservation. In contrast, fruit species are usually maintained in field or greenhouse conditions. Apart from the fact that the recalcitrant seed behavior of many fruit species impedes conventional storage, most fruit cultivars have specific genetic combinations that can be maintained only through vegetative propagation.

The lack of international fruit conservation programs—with the exception of bananas—results in increased reliance on national genebanks to protect cultivars and wild relatives of fruit crops. National fruit conservation programs must become more synergistic on a global scale, as field and greenhouse collections are particularly vulnerable to environmental threats, theft, and pests and diseases.

For some economically important clonal fruit and vegetable crops, such as bananas and garlic (*Allium sativum*), collections can be secured in tissue culture or by using cryogenic storage (Panis et al. 2020). The development and application of tissue culture and cryopreservation protocols to a broader range of species, in combination with global investment in cryo-capacity, are essential in order to safeguard the diversity of clonal and recalcitrant fruit and vegetable species in *ex-situ* conditions.

A global rescue plan must be accompanied with documenting genetic variation in traits of newly-collected and already-conserved fruit and vegetable germplasm. This documentation should include screening for nutritional quality for the purpose of developing and growing more healthy food. The information about intra-specific variation in nutrition composition will therefore help in making food and nutrition policies that promote and stimulate healthy diets and nutrition more precise and effective (Harris et al. 2022).

There is, however, still a poor understanding of the intra-specific variation of traits related to nutritional quality, as well as the heritability of high nutritional values and the impact of climatic factors on nutritional quality (Harris et al. 2022; Meckelmann et al. 2015; Rouphael et al. 2018; Lutaladio et al. 2010). Closing this knowledge gap towards a better understanding of the intra-specific variation in nutritional quality and of genotype x environment effects on said quality will help in selecting nutrient-dense and climate-resilient varieties. These varieties can be used to develop and grow nutrient-dense varieties, minimize effects of micronutrient dilution in breeding for yield increase, and develop varieties with special flavors for niche markets such as tasty tomatoes and gourmet chilies (*Capsicum* spp.) (Simon et al. 2009; Schouten et al. 2019; Tieman et al. 2017; Meckelmann et al. 2013). The mapping of genomic regions related to high or low phytonutrient concentrations will greatly enhance the development of varieties with high nutritional quality and specific taste profiles (Tieman et al. 2017).

Besides the micronutrients that are well-studied for nutrition, fruit and vegetable species harbor a wide range of phytonutrients and bioactive compounds that increase bioavailability and that are beneficially for health, including in ways that
are not yet understood and that still represent a large knowledge gap for further research (Harris et al. 2022; Lutaladio et al. 2010; CBD 1992).

The rescue plan must be further complemented with conservation *in situ* (on farms, at the landscape level and in protected areas) to maintain local fruit and vegetable crops and varieties that play important ecological and dietary roles, and to stimulate the evolution of new traits through natural and human selection. Recognizing the importance of *in situ* conservation and the sovereign rights of countries over their natural resources, the CBD encourages contracting parties to take measures to protect natural ecosystems and viable populations both within and outside protected areas, restore degraded habitats, and control invasive species, among other threats (CBD 1992). Countries must put in place enabling policies and regulations to protect threatened species and populations, as well as promote sustainable use and the protection of local communities’ traditional knowledge. Both the Plant Treaty and FAO Second Global Plan of Action provide further support to *in situ* conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (FAO 2009, 2011).

A common strategy for *in situ* conservation of CWR is for countries to carry out conservation planning exercises that prioritize CWR according to specific criteria, given that large numbers of CWR species may exist in a given country and it will not be possible to target them all in national strategies (Dulloo and Maxted 2019). The development of a National Strategy and Action Plan for *in situ* conservation of CWR is recommended to guide the implementation and monitoring of conservation activities such as the establishment of genetic reserves in protected areas (Fig. 1e). Wild relatives of fruit and vegetable crops are seldom included as a priority on national inventory lists; it is important to raise awareness of the need to conserve the wild relatives of these crops.

Local fruit and vegetable crops and varieties are still maintained by champion farmers, male and female, and communities in different production systems—diversified farms, home gardens, orchards, or other cultivated areas of high species and varietal diversity (Dulloo et al. 2017) (Fig. 1f). These plants provide nutritional and food security, income-generating opportunities, and ecosystem services, and contribute to cultural identity (Sthapit et al. 2016). Governments should recognize and protect unique and traditional production systems, such as some countries are doing already for important agricultural heritage systems (Koohafkan and Altieri 2011). They should further support these farmers and communities in maintaining these local crops and varieties by linking them to farm-to-school programs and niche markets for more resilient livelihoods, and by providing other types of incentives to maintain diversity in traditional production systems (Dulloo et al. 2017).

Finally, good agricultural practices and national and regional conservation strategies to protect pollinators and dispersers and their natural habitats must be implemented to safeguard these critical associated organisms of fruit and vegetable species (Wagner et al. 2021; Vasiliev and Greenwood 2020). These strategies should be embedded in various biodiversity and agricultural policy frameworks at national and international levels to stimulate integrated approaches for agrobiodiversity conservation. Pollinator conservation strategies have already been developed in the
United States, and in several countries of the European Union and the Global South; such strategies require urgent development and implementation elsewhere.

# 5 Conditions for success

An effective rescue plan requires clear goals, prioritizes actions, and tracks progress in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It should be developed by a global team of experts from different sectors and disciplines in consultation with custodians and users of fruit and vegetable biodiversity worldwide, and then implemented in a concerted way under the umbrella of a global initiative endorsed by the Plant Treaty. Only with sufficient, sustained funding can a global rescue plan for fruit and vegetable biodiversity become a success. As a ballpark estimate, a 10-year global rescue plan for fruit and vegetable biodiversity would require at least 250 million USD.

**Acknowledgments** The authors wish to thank the United National Food Systems Summit Fruit and Vegetables Working Group for their original input to the original UNFSS working paper. Funding for this research was provided by long-term strategic donors to the World Vegetable Center: Taiwan, UK aid from the UK government, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Germany, Thailand, Philippines, Korea, and Japan.

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**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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<figure><img src="image_116.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_117.png" /></figure>

Joachim von Braun (✉), M. Sanchéz Sorondo, and Roy Steiner

# 1 Introduction

The global food system is malfunctioning, leaving large segments of the population undernourished or malnourished, and causing significant environmental damage. Food losses in the production, processing and marketing segments of food systems are part of the problem. Food-wasting at the retail, household and restaurant levels is a serious problem too. The analyses and calls for action in this volume are motivated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 12, i.e., Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, and specifically, “By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.”

This goal is very much in line with the Encyclical *Laudato Si'*, in which Pope Francis calls for changes for the purpose of overcoming “throwaway culture.” Food Loss and Waste (FLAW) is a moral issue, because of the adverse effects on people and our planet (Grizzetti et al. 2013). It is detrimental to the planet due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the wasting of the water and land used as inputs (Kummu

<footnote>J. von Braun (✉)
Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
e-mail: jvonbraun@uni-bonn.de</footnote>

<footnote>M. S. Sorondo
Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Rome, Italy</footnote>

<footnote>R. Steiner
The Rockefeller Foundation, New York, NY, USA</footnote>
et al. 2012),<fnref n="1" /> and to people – the poor in particular – whose labor is squandered and whose livelihoods are compromised when FLAW occurs.

**Box 1: SDG 12 – Ensuring Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns**

> “By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.”

Since loss and waste are related but distinct phenomena, each merits a unique indicator, as stated by FAO:

**Sub-Indicator | Food Loss Index:** The Food Loss Index (FLI) focuses on food losses that occur from production up to (and not including) the retail level.
http://www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals/indicators/1231/en/

and as developed by UNEP:

**Sub-Indicator | Food Waste Index:** A Food Waste Index, which comprises retail and consumption levels. https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/35280;jsessionid=37107F3730786C883BCABD606C13CBFE

The aim of this chapter is to share the latest scientific evidence on how to reduce food loss and waste, and thereby contribute to global food and nutrition security. The second aim is to provide recommendations for expanded global and national actions, including public and private investments and initiatives by citizens, corporations, governments, and international organizations. We recognize that the alliance of actors must become broader in order to make significant improvements globally in reducing FLAW.

To fulfill these objectives, we focus on clearly defining food loss and waste, while adopting a value-chain approach. When considering the magnitude of the food loss and waste challenge, summing up the tonnage of different foods is not appropriate: not only must weight be considered, but also the economic and environmental cost of wasted and lost food must. The latest approaches to measurement in economic, caloric, or quality-adjusted weight terms are presented and discussed.

Further, food loss and waste reduction have huge benefits, but also costs, and these costs must not be ignored when aiming for efficient solutions (Aragie et al. 2018). Benefits and costs must consider environmental, as well as food and nutrition security, effects. We know that environmental change and people’s health cannot be easily captured by economic calculations (Kuiper and Cui 2021; Chen et al. 2020).

<footnote n="1">¹This chapter is based on the findings and recommendations for action identified by the participants of the International Conference by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) with the Rockefeller Foundation. The book based on the conference is at https://www.pas.va/content/dam/casinapioiv/pas/pdf-volumi/scripta-varia/sv147pas.pdf</footnote>
Successfully meeting SDG 12.3 requires approaches that foster education and awareness, behavioral change, a renewed global dialogue, and coordinated global action. Ultimately, we need to create incentives that will strengthen the business case for tackling food loss and waste and moving towards more sustainable consumption patterns (Qi et al. 2021).

As we aim to unite and improve our understanding and strengthen our conviction to act on food loss, we are aware that these phenomena are embedded within a broader food system context.

## 2 Food Loss and Waste

Until recently, there has been an absence of a uniform definition of food waste and loss (Xue and Liu 2019). Various definitions have been used in literature and in policy documents (Bellemare et al. 2017; Fabi et al. 2021). This lacuna stands in the way of analyses on food waste and loss, including its precise measurement at the national, regional and global scales. The FAO, therefore, provides a definition and defines food loss and waste as the “decrease in quantity or quality of food along the food supply chain” (FAO 2019). In this definition, *food losses* occur in the food supply chains from harvest to retail and *food waste* occurs in retail and consumption (Cattaneo et al. 2021). The definition has been expanded by others to include pre-harvest, quantitative and qualitative food losses (Delgado et al. 2021).

Food waste concepts have also been further clarified by UNEP with its Food Waste Index Report 2021, which “… for the purposes of the Food Waste Index, ‘food waste’ is defined as food … and the associated inedible parts removed from the human food supply chain in the following sectors: Retail, Food service, Households. ‘Removed from the human food supply chain’ means one of the following end destinations: landfill; controlled combustion; sewer; litter/discards/refuse; co/anaerobic digestion; compost/aerobic digestion; or land application. Food is defined as any substance – whether processed, semi-processed or raw – that is intended for human consumption. ‘Food’ includes drink, and any substance that has been used in the manufacture, preparation or treatment of food. Therefore, food waste includes both ‘edible parts’: i.e., the parts of food that were intended for human consumption, and ‘inedible parts’: components associated with a food that are not intended to be consumed by humans. Examples of inedible parts associated with food could include bones, rinds and pits/stones” (United Nations Environment Programme 2021).

A lack of consensus on the definition spills into measurement of food loss and waste (Delgado et al. 2021; Bellemare et al. 2017). FLI (Box 1) measures the economic value of food losses based on commodity prices. FLI is helpful in cost-benefit analyses. FLI and FWI are also used to monitor SDG 12.3. Other measures, such as food loss in terms of calories or reduction in GHGs, are suitable for analyses of targeted interventions such as improvements in nutrition outcomes and impact on environmental sustainability (Xue and Liu 2019).
Actions to reduce food loss and waste are already planned or in place in many countries, but, so far do not add up to sufficient global impact and joint learning. The most promising actions can and must be enhanced. By bringing together a group of prominent leaders, actively engaged with this issue, from academia, religious communities, the private sector, government, civil society, and the United Nations (UN), we aim to create an interdisciplinary space for analysis, the sharing of knowledge and focused solutions. Ultimately, reducing FLAW requires a change in mindsets among those who waste food and large-scale investments in value chains that are losing food. The State of Food and Agriculture Report (2019) by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and Reducing Food Loss and Waste: Setting a Global Action Agenda (2019) by the World Resource Institute (WRI) and a coalition of partners, along with other reports, provide a basis for action. How to go about these challenges is summarized in the conclusions and proposed actions below.

# 3 Proposed Actions

## 1. Increased Commitment for Action

Food loss and waste (FLAW) has serious moral repercussions, in view of the prevailing hunger of more than 820 million people and the lack of access to healthy diets for 2 billion people (FAO's SOFI report 2019). Resources such as water and fertile land are becoming scarcer, because food is produced but never eaten.

FLAW significantly contributes to GHG emissions (SOFA 2019), and thereby to climate change and its consequences (Read et al. 2020). FLAW is detrimental to the planet and its people. It is morally, economically and environmentally unacceptable in the era of the SDGs. There is a need for an increased commitment to action from national, regional and global leaders towards SDG 12.3, i.e., by 2030, to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses – an achievable goal based on existing knowledge and technology. Yet, even though it is within our ability to tackle, FLAW reduction needs more attention and investment.

Successfully achieving Target 12.3 of the United Nations SDGs requires a new perspective on how to reduce the use of resources and increase the efficiency of the production, preservation, processing and distribution of food at the producer, intermediary, processor and wholesale levels (i.e., losses in the value chain). It also requires addressing our “throwaway culture.” For that, education, awareness, and behavioral change among consumers and retailers are critical. A renewed global dialogue at the highest levels of government, business, religion, and civil society is urgently needed to achieve the target of halving FLAW by 2030.
## 2. Localizing the FLAW problem, while tapping into global solutions

Data deficiencies mask the diversity of the FLAW problem – which varies greatly across regions and value chains. While a high percentage of food is currently lost at the production, handling and processing stages in low-income and emerging economies, food is wasted in retail and consumption stages in higher income countries due to market design and consumer behavior (Min et al. 2021). Yet, market design and food waste patterns are increasing in low- and middle-income countries as the global middle class grows and urbanizes. Solutions are within reach for all country groups, but need to be tailored to specific contexts (Brander et al. 2021) and differentiated as to food loss versus food waste, as these are related but distinct concepts. Food waste happens due to a lack of appropriate infrastructure, regulations, profit-seeking, negligence, time scarcity and economic abundance at the consumer level. Food loss occurs due to unfavorable climatic conditions, improper post-harvest handling, and incentive structures that cause food loss to be seen as a rational economic option, as well as a lack of information, education, technology, infrastructure, affordable financing and market access. FLAW has social equity and gender implications. Food production, and not just that in low-income countries, involves large shares of unpaid labor done by women and often low-paid workers, including migrants, producing cheap food that might be undervalued, and thus is wasted by customers. In addition, all steps in supply chains should be reviewed and monitored in order to prevent the use of forced labor and modern slavery (according to SDG 8.7).

Value chains of perishable and nutrient-rich foods (both crops and animal-sourced protein) are significantly affected. More nutritious and healthier dietary patterns require managing and preserving these nutritious foods and fostering attention to food safety.<fnref n="2" />

FLAW requires attention, along with all aspects of wasteful processing, transportation, packaging (e.g., the plastics issue) and energy usage along food supply chains – issues that, it is hoped, a circular economy and bioeconomy can address systemically. Attention to prevention, not just reduction, should be considered, and solutions need to consider further the possible impacts on food access and affordability.

## 3. Strengthening of information and data

Only when sound data are gathered and made available will measurement and monitoring progress against benchmarks become feasible and viable for investors and companies (Xue and Liu 2019). When considering the magnitude of the FLAW challenge, summing up the tonnage of different foods does not appropriately capture food, environmental, and economic issues. We must move beyond a weight metric and assess the economic, environmental, institutional, health, and human costs of

<footnote n="2">²The issue has been addressed in the Conference by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition on Food Safety and Healthy Diets in 2018 http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/events/2018/food/statement.html accessed on 08.12.2021.</footnote>
lost and wasted food. The hotspots in value chains where food losses occur are increasingly identified, as are effects in terms of quality losses, economic costs and emissions costs (FAO's SOFA report 2019).

While FLAW reduction has huge benefits, the costs of action cannot be ignored when aiming for effective and efficient solutions. A comprehensive approach of cost of action versus cost of inaction may be helpful.

Efforts to collect and analyze data need to be doubled down, not only for reporting purposes, but also for the identification of causes of FLAW and decision-making for action by all players in value chains. We encourage agencies in charge of these metrics and analyses to step up efforts in these areas, donors to enhance financial support, and the private sector to report on a volunteer basis.

### 4. Research in science, technology and extension

Research initiatives by FAO, WRI, IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), UNEP, the World Bank, the IADB, the InterAcademy Partnership, and universities, as well as others, highlight opportunities and challenges for research on food and nutrition security and sustainable food production, and propose priorities for natural science, social science and food post-harvest and food technology research on FLAW reduction.

Close cooperation among research communities and different stakeholders across food systems is called for to make progress on evidence-based FLAW reduction and action, including food market analysis, in order to understand the potential of solutions and innovations, as well as the feasibility of their adoption (Ellison et al. 2019). The FLAW problem needs further clarification as to what it means for people and the planet, and what it takes to move towards a more sustainable future. As waste is partly a behavioral issue, research on the behavioral aspects of FLAW needs more attention.

The causes of FLAW from a food system perspective need to be comprehensively investigated in order to avoid trade-offs across interventions if practiced within silos, and in order to point at their policy implications in the short and long term. The main knowledge gaps and the research agenda have been outlined in various recent publications, such as the InterAcademy Partnership report on “Opportunities for future research and innovations on food and nutrition security and agriculture” (2018). Urgent action, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Southern Asia, and other developing regions affected by high incidence of food insecurity and food loss, is needed.

Pathways to effective alliances need to reflect a systemic approach to FLAW reduction, incorporating innovations in science and technology, and in monitoring food items transiting through the system. There is a role for extension services in dissemination, and for universities in building FLAW into their curricula. Information and communication technologies (ICT) and data science have proven to be game-changers in this respect. The research community must communicate, coordinate and collaborate, and governments, businesses and foundations must invest new resources to fund FLAW research.
## 5. Civil society actions

Civil society is taking action in areas related to FLAW. Different groups across the globe lead campaigns and disseminate information and good practices, educating consumers across all age groups, youths in particular, and advocating for more sustainable consumption patterns. Consumers are becoming aware of their environmental footprint when making choices about food purchases, portion sizes, packaging materials, and the distances that foods travel. Other groups, such as Food Banks, have developed models to collect, repurpose and re-distribute food in urban settings. Broadening efforts at the grassroots level from national or regional networks towards a global network will be fruitful. Efforts led by conscious youths need support, including consumer and producer/farmer perspectives that care about the sustainability of the planet and the people.

Education, for instance, through the global sharing of experiences in successful actions, can help countries identify solutions pertaining to issues of relevance tailored to specific circumstances. Toolkits in many languages for civil society organizations would be helpful. Dialogue on FLAW needs to be replicated more globally, reinforcing positive social norms and engaging influencers and role models.

Religious communities also have a role to play. These communities can engage in leading community initiatives against food waste and loss. Both loss and waste are moral issues causing harm beyond their economic and environmental tolls. Faith-based communities should initiate dialogues on acting together to support, advocate and collaborate on reducing FLAW.

## 6. Government actions

Governments at all levels need to set explicit, ambitious and realistic FLAW reduction targets, measure the level and change of FLAW, and implement an effective and economically efficient FLAW reduction strategy. Some countries have invested in developing plans and actions to reduce FLAW. So far, however, they do not add up to sufficient global impact and joint action.

Investments in critical value-chain infrastructure need to be prioritized in low- and middle-income countries. Such investments would allow for vertical coordination and modernization of value chains. The need for such investments is particularly acute when dietary patterns are changing and demand for a more diverse and nutritious food basket, especially in urban areas, is rising. Innovative solutions for financing such government plans as the Sustainable Development Bond launched by the World Bank and innovative financing solutions such as a fund for investments in FLAW reduction might facilitate progress in this area.

Governments should also seek to redress incentive structures (including through price and regulatory measures like standards) such as those that encourage farmers and other supply chain actors, as well as retailers and consumers, to adopt practices that help reduce FLAW.

Furthermore, two issues need government consideration at the macro scale: (1) diversion from rule-based free trade can accelerate FLAW and needs attention;
and (2) as FLAW accounts for a significant share of GHG emissions (Galford et al. 2020), the issue should feature on the action agenda of climate negotiations and Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs).

## 7. Business case and corporate actions

A business case for addressing FLAW seems to exist, yet needs to be clearly demonstrated. Public support is initially required for implementation at scale and to reap societal benefits. A case in point is connecting to small farmers: As food companies aim to create value, business can lead the way in developing models that are more inclusive, such as sourcing from small-scale producers. New product lines that are more sustainable will result from implementing business solutions that create shared value and measure progress towards tangible targets (Martins et al. 2019). However, to convince customers, corporations need to assure transparency of actions and results in terms of FLAW targets.

Creativity is encouraged. For example, FLAW reduction can be a large domain for innovative start-ups targeted by the financial sector. Voluntary efforts being made by businesses can be an effective mechanism if transparency of results is assured. Market-based approaches can help, but attention to impacts on low-income people and to the indirect effects on environments is necessary. Given simple metrics, setting targets and following up company by company, including input suppliers and company employees, is a practical approach.

Taking a shared value approach is promising when FLAW issues are included in corporate monitoring, auditing and reporting to shareholders. There are also roles for farmers, farmer organizations and small- and medium-sized enterprises to create awareness of the benefits of FLAW reduction and, where possible, seek collaborative responses (e.g., cooperative-organized cold chain development and other value chain improvements).

## 8. Joint actions, leadership and governance

To address the FLAW challenge effectively requires collective action. Joint government and private sector action at the global, regional and national levels, with engagement by religious communities, civil society and consumers, is required. Such joint actions will need to keep the following ideas in mind:

1. Alliances of different actors require clearly defined strategies to reduce FLAW (e.g., among farmers, traders and the corporate sector, as well as among funders);

2. Government commitments to measure and report on FLAW metrics are essential for joint actions. For this, SDG 12.3.1.a (for losses) and SDG 12.3.1.b (for waste) are the indicators that need to be collected;

3. Institutional innovations and incentive systems are required to bring together broad, stable and well-funded alliances for the reduction of FLAW;

4. Examples of joint actions need to be systematically assessed and evaluated in relation to their effectiveness. This can provide the bases for good storytelling;
5. Increased, aligned and coordinated investments (and information on investment returns) will help to expand investments further;

6. Initiatives for complementary and joint action between civil society and businesses can be win-win if based on mutual respect and well-defined goals;

7. Joint action for FLAW must also address food safety, to ensure that foods are properly handled, stored and prepared according to strict health and consumer protection standards. Moreover, supply chains should be carefully checked to prevent the use of forced labor and modern slavery;

8. Pathways towards a global action plan and key commitments to address existing knowledge and research gaps and investments for the realization of SDG 12.3 need to be promoted;

9. A focused food loss and waste summit conference should be considered, and the planned 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit led by FAO with IFAD, WFP, and others, in addition to further high-level global gatherings, should include a strong focus on FLAW reduction. FLAW reduction action for the achievement of SDG 12.3 needs a facilitating mechanism, adhered to by the United Nations, governments, civil society and the private sector;

10. We aim for coordinated communication efforts to raise the profile of the FLAW issue in the media and mobilize civil society and religious communities to embed FLAW reduction efforts as part of an inclusive and sustainable food system.

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**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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<figure><img src="image_118.png" /></figure>
Part V

Costs, Investment, Finance,
and Trade Actions
# The True Cost of Food: A Preliminary Assessment

<figure><img src="image_119.png" /></figure>

Check for
updates

Sheryl Hendriks, Adrian de Groot Ruiz, Mario Herrero Acosta, Hans Baumers, Pietro Galgani, Daniel Mason-D'Croz ID, Cecile Godde ID, Katharina Waha, Dimitra Kanidou, Joachim von Braun ID, Mauricio Benitez, Jennifer Blanke, Patrick Caron ID, Jessica Fanzo, Friederike Greb, Lawrence Haddad, Anna Herforth, Danie Jordaan, William Masters, Claudia Sadoff ID, Jean-François Soussana, Maria Cristina Tirado, Maximo Torero, and Matthew Watkins

## 1 Introduction

The vision of the UN Food Systems Summit was to “launch bold new actions, solutions and strategies to deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), each of which relies on healthier, more sustainable and more equitable food systems” (UN 2021a, b). The Summit was seeking to transform the way in which the world produces, consumes and thinks about food and to build a just and resilient world where no one is left behind (UN 2021a, b). In various Summit platform discussions, questions have arisen relating to (a) the true cost of the food we eat,

With assistance from Prisca Atieno and Valiant Odhiambo (Kenya), Postgraduate Assistants, Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

S. Hendriks (✉)
Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development,
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
e-mail: sheryl.hendriks@up.ac.za

A. de Groot Ruiz · H. Baumers · P. Galgani · D. Kanidou
Impact Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

M. H. Acosta
Cornell Global Development, Cornell Atkinson Centre for Sustainability,
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

D. Mason-D'Croz
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy Group, Wageningen University & Research,
Wageningen, the Netherlands
(b) what costs would be involved in shifting to more sustainable patterns of production and consumption, (c) who would bear the cost of these changes and (d) what the implications are for the poorest consumers. Addressing these hidden externalities would be a significant, bold action.

Ensuring sustainable food systems entails ensuring that food systems provide affordable and healthy food to all people while respecting planetary and social boundaries. Current food systems are not sustainable. They generate substantial environmental, social and health costs while failing to provide affordable food to all (FAO et al. 2020. For example:

* The emissions associated with pre- and post-production activities in the global food system are estimated to be 21–37% of total net anthropogenic GHG emissions (IPPC 2019),

* The majority of the global working poor work under difficult conditions in agriculture (World Bank 2016),

* 690 million people were undernourished in 2019 (FAO et al. 2020), and

* More than 10 million lives are lost annually due to unhealthy eating patterns (Afshin et al. 2019).

C. Godde

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) St Lucia, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

K. Waha

Agriculture and Food, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) St Lucia, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

J. von Braun

Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

M. Benitez

responsAbility Investments AG, Zurich, Switzerland

J. Blanke

Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, Basel, Switzerland

P. Caron

Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions, Montpellier, France

J. Fanzo

Berman Institute of Bioethics, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, USA

F. Greb

Assessment and Monitoring Division, World Food Programme (WFP), Rome, Italy

L. Haddad

Lead: Food Systems Summit Action Track 1, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Geneva, Switzerland
A transition to sustainable food systems will reduce their environmental, social and health costs while making healthy food affordable to all. Researchers have only recently begun investigating what dietary changes will be necessary to keep food systems within planetary boundaries (Herrero et al. 2017; Rockström et al. 2009). Even more recently, the question has arisen as to how changes in the food system and their resultant impacts on environments in which consumers acquire foods (food environments) affect our health, particularly the incidence of obesity and non-communicable diseases (Willett et al. 2019). For example, the EAT-Lancet report estimated that a transformation to healthy diets by 2050 would require substantial dietary shifts. This will include reducing the consumption of:

* Foods with added sugars (including harmful non-nutritive sweeteners),

* Refined grains (that can cause diabetes),

* Added sodium (that can cause hypertension),

* Harmful fats (especially harmful trans fats, and, to a lesser degree, other solid fats linked to cardiovascular disease), and

* Processed meats (associated with cancer).

A. Herforth
Friedman School of Nutrition, Tufts University, Boston, MA, USA

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

D. Jordaan
Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development, University of
Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

W. Masters
Friedman School of Nutrition and Department of Economics, Tufts University, Medford, MA,
USA

C. Sadoff
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, CGIAR System Management
Office, Paris, France

J.-F. Soussana
French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), Paris,
France

M. C. Tirado
School of Public Health UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

International Climate Initiatives at the LMU Center for Urban Resilience, Los Angeles, CA,
USA

M. Torero
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy

M. Watkins
Food Reform for Sustainability & Health (FReSH), Geneva, Switzerland
Increasing the consumption of healthy, protective foods such as fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds (Willett et al. 2019) will address multiple health-related issues. These protective foods are needed for their phytochemicals and fiber that may be absent from other foods. Often, unhealthy foods displace healthy alternatives (such as fruit, legumes, nuts, seeds and vegetables, along with beneficial forms of primary processing such as fermentation) that may be less convenient (Masters et al. 2021) and less marketed and, therefore, under-consumed.

Effective game-changing strategies<fnref n="1" /> for achieving sustainable food systems should arguably not only treat the symptoms of the problem. Solutions should also address the root causes of why food systems impose environmental and health costs and fail to provide sufficient quantities of beneficial foods in the first place. One major root cause is that these costs and benefits of production and consumption are externalized, due to how markets are designed. These externalities are not reflected in market prices (Baker et al. 2020) and have no economic ‘currency.’ As a result, externalities are hidden effects of the choices of market players, and make sustainable and healthy food less affordable for consumers and less profitable for producers. Historically, business profits and the choices of all stakeholders have been based on market prices and recorded in economic statistics such as gross domestic product (GDP). External costs and benefits can also be documented in statistics on mortality and disease, climate change and pollution. However, the link between market activity and those social or environmental harms is not directly visible or reflected in the incentives that drive economic systems. As a result, the economic value of food, which drives economic choices by businesses, consumers and governments, is highly distorted. By providing distorted information and perverse (often unintended) incentives against affordable, sustainable and healthy food, externalities constitute a significant barrier to attaining sustainable food systems. Moreover, even with a full-cost approach, there are likely trade-offs across the health and sustainability considerations. There is considerable diversity in regional food systems and their externalities.

Internalizing the externalities of food systems requires redefining the value of food by measuring and pricing these externalities through ‘true-cost accounting’ (TCA) approaches. At the request of the Scientific Group of the UN Food Systems Summit, a working group set out to investigate the true costs of food and propose possible actions to address the problem.

<footnote n="1">¹The UNFSS definition of a game changing and systemic solution' is a feasible action, based on evidence, best practice or a thorough conceptual framework that would shift operational models or underlying rules, incentives and structures that shape food systems, acting on multiple parts of – or across – the food system, to advance global goals that can be sustained over time. The key criteria that a 'game changing and systemic' solution must have are to (1) have impact potential at scale (including return on investment), (2) be actionable (taking into account politics, capacity, costs) and (3) be sustainable (i.e., the ability to keep delivering up to 2030 and beyond).</footnote>
This chapter aims to inform food system stakeholders about how they can grasp an opportunity based on the most recent scientific insights in this young and emerging field of analysis. Section 2 summarizes the problem of externalities. Section 3 describes how TCA can be used to redefine the value of food. Section 4 provides an analysis of the current true environmental and health costs of food at the global level based on research from the working group. Section 5 outlines the potential benefits of dietary transitions. Section 6 outlines the study's limitations and future research avenues. Section 7 concludes and presents recommendations.

## 2 Externalities as Barriers to Sustainable Food Systems

Externalities refer to “situations when the effect of production or consumption of goods and services imposes costs or benefits on others which are not reflected in the prices charged for the goods and services being provided” (OECD 2003). Externalities can arise when people are affected by the market choices of others in which they have no say (Laffont 2008). For example, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from one person’s actions affect people far away, as well as future generations who have no say in those decisions. Externalities can also be beneficial, such as disease prevention that lowers health care costs. There are other price-related market failures that lead to the inefficient allocation of resources. In addition to monopoly and monopsony, a lack of information or behavioral biases, for example, around health effects, can lead consumers to ignore the costs and benefits of their decisions (Gruber and Köszegi 2001; Wang and Sloan 2018). Due to missing markets, the well-being effects of affordable, healthy food on the poor will not translate to higher prices or drive the supply of more healthy food.

Externalities arise from several elements in the food system (see Table 1). The boundary between social and human capital is defined differently across frameworks, and health externalities can also be classified as human capital (TEEB 2018). There is considerable variation in costs between food products and regions. In some cases, traditional practices of animal husbandry can have positive effects on natural capital (Baltussen et al. 2019). Commodities involving production by smallholders in developing countries (such as cocoa or coffee) tend to have higher external social costs, including underearning for farmers.

Externalities create significant problems in food systems. The first problem is that externalities prevent societies from achieving their full potential by distorting the information about the value of food conveyed by market prices. Gemmill-Herren et al. 2021. The market price of products does not reflect their true costs and benefits. Also, the value of companies and their decisions reflect expected future profits – the difference between the sum of the cost of outputs minus the sum of the cost of all
<table><caption>**Table 1** Summary of the key externalities in food systems</caption><thead><tr><th>Type of externality</th><th>Examples of externalities</th><th>Endpoint impact(s)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Environmental<sup>1</sup> (effects on natural capital)</td><td>Air, water and soil pollution GHG emissions Land use Overuse of renewable resources Soil depletion Use of scarce materials Water use</td><td>Contribution to climate change, health effects, depletion of abiotic resources, depletion of biotic resources, including ecosystem services and biodiversity</td></tr><tr><td>Social<sup>2</sup> (effects on social rights and human and social capital)</td><td>Animal welfare Child and forced labor Discrimination and harassment High and variable prices Training Underpayment and underearning</td><td>Poverty, well-being, food security and human skills</td></tr><tr><td>Health<sup>3</sup> (effects on human health)</td><td>Antimicrobial resistance Undernutrition Unhealthy diet composition Zoonoses</td><td>Human life (mortality and the quality of life), economic (medical costs, informal care, lost working days)</td></tr><tr><td>Economic<sup>4</sup> (effects on financial, manufactured and intellectual capital)</td><td>Food waste Tax evasion</td><td>Increased food demand, and a decrease in public funds</td></tr></tbody></table>

Sources

inputs, including labor (OECD 2002), all valued at market prices. If a company contributes to climate change, underpays workers or enables healthy and affordable food, this is not reflected in its profits (Serafeim et al. 2019). As the financial returns of companies are based on their (expected) profits, the financial value of investments does not reflect the actual value that these investments bestow upon society

<footnote n="1">¹FAO (2015), NCC (2015), Baltussen et al. (2016), Allen and Prosperi (2016), Nkonya et al. (2016), TEEB (2018, 2019), Dalin and Outhwaite (2019), FOLU (2019), and Galgani et al. (2021).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Baltussen et al. (2016), Westhoek et al. (2016), IDH (2016), WBCSD (2018), Jaffee et al. (2019), and Galgani et al. (2021).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³Baltussen et al. (2016), FOLU (2019), TEEB (2018), Afshin et al. (2019), and FAO et al. (2020).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴FAO (2015), TEEB (2018, 2019), Impact Institute (2020), and FAO et al. (2020).</footnote>
(Serafeim et al. 2019). The economic value of the food sector is measured by its contribution to GDP, which is the sum of all companies’ added value - the value of output minus the value of intermediate consumption measured at market prices (OECD 2001). Hence, the degree to which food systems contribute to climate change, deforestation or poor health is not factored into crucial economic indicators for policymakers (Stiglitz et al. 2018), and externalities, therefore, lead countries to have lower average living standards than would otherwise be possible.

A second problem with (negative) externalities is social injustice. The existing arrangement of property rights, institutions and infrastructure was constructed over time, reflecting the past choices of those in power who sometimes neglected or actively harmed marginalized groups, including women and girls, indigenous and minority populations, migrant workers, and other communities. Environmental harm such as air and water pollution is often concentrated in places inhabited by marginalized groups. Unhealthy products are often marketed most intensively to vulnerable populations such as children.

The result is a variety of involuntary harms that may include severe rights violations (forced labor, harassment of women or underpayment in the agricultural sector) and that breach the rights of the people who produce our food. A lack of affordable food is also a breach of the right to food for consumers. The erosion of natural capital breaches the rights of future generations to decent livelihoods (United Nations 1972).

The third problem with externalities is that they inadvertently reward unsustainable, unaffordable and unhealthy food production and consumption. As natural, health and social costs are externalized, it is more profitable to produce unsustainable and unhealthy food. Child labor, forced labor and underpaid workers represent cheap labor; consuming natural resources without replenishing them provides cheap inputs and the decision not to contain pollution saves costs. At the same time, adding calories, salt, poor quality fats, sugars and harmful sugar alternatives to food items, and promoting such foods, can increase sales, despite the negative effects on health (Stuckler et al. 2012). Food safety adds to the harmful effects on health, especially in developing countries (Devleesschauwer et al. 2018). One reason is that there is neurobehavioral evidence that some unhealthy foods elicit higher reward responses in the brain than healthy foods (Banerjee et al. 2020).

In the same way, encouraging high levels of food waste, e.g., through appealing packaging, can increase sales. Moreover, firms have no incentive to make healthy food affordable. Businesses set prices to optimize their business’s profits (Laffont 2008), sometimes using inflated prices as signals of healthy food (Haws et al. 2017). As a result, sustainable and healthy food is more expensive to buy than unhealthy food (Stuckler et al. 2012).

Given that global markets allocate capital based on financial returns, most capital will flow to the companies most successful at externalizing costs to optimize profit (Serafeim et al. 2019). In an economy where consumers maximize purchasing power, businesses maximize profits. In addition, investors maximize returns, leading to the underproduction of food, which, in turn, leads to waste, overuse of natural resources and overconsumption of unhealthy food (Gemill-Herrero et al. 2021).
In summary, externalities form a significant barrier to the transition to sustainable food systems. It is difficult to imagine how policies aiming to foster sustainable food systems will be successful in an economic system where the erosion of natural capital, breaches of human rights, and unhealthy food are permissible and strongly incentivized.

## 3 True-Cost Accounting: Redefining the Value of Food

One first step to addressing externalities is to expose them and redefine the value of food. This can be realized through TCA, a tool for the systemic measurement and valuation of environmental, social, health and economic costs and benefits to facilitate sustainable choices by governments and food system stakeholders (Baker et al. 2020; Gemmill-Herren et al. 2021). TCA can serve different purposes, in which different actors have different applications (Baker et al. 2020):

* Governments can integrate TCA into local, national or regional policy and budgeting. For example, Brazil, China, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Tanzania, and Thailand have applied TCA through the TEEBAgriFood framework's participatory process to bring stakeholders together to identify agricultural land-use policies that would benefit from the valuation of ecosystem services (Baker et al. 2020). An interim TCA assessment in Indonesia contributed to agroforestry being included in the country's 2020 five-year development plan (Baker et al. 2020).

* Businesses can use these structured assessments to minimize negative impacts and enhance positive benefits across value chains (Serafeim et al. 2019; WBCSD 2021a). Companies can use TCA to produce impact statements or impact weighted accounts (monetized, multi-capital, multi-stakeholder accounts of all material business impacts, including true costs and benefits) (Baker et al. 2020) and manage their externalities (Impact Institute 2020).<fnref n="2" />

* Financial institutions use TCA for reporting, impact investment and risk assessment (WBCSD 2021a, b; Impact Institute 2020); and also to obtain assurance on their published impact statements (Schramade 2020).

* Farmers can use TCA as a means to account for the costs and benefits of their agricultural practices (Jones 2020). Various initiatives recognize farmers, peasants, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, and other food producers as important stewards of biocultural landscapes (Baker et al. 2020; Gemmill-Herren et al. 2021).

<footnote n="2">²A report by the Harvard Business School found that, by 2019, at least 56 companies worldwide had disclosed monetized information about their impact, five of which were in the food sector (Serafeim et al. 2019). By 2021, around ten food multinationals had become members of the Capitals Coalition (2021b)), and various leading multinational participate in WBCSDs True Value of Food project (WBCSD 2021b).</footnote>
* *Consumers* can use TCA to become aware of the environmental and social externalities embedded in the food they buy (Lord 2020). Many labeling schemes incorporate TCA information to strengthen the transparency that they provide to consumers (Gemmill-Herren et al. 2021).

TCA recognizes that the economy's productive assets go beyond the assets currently accounted for, and include natural, social and human capital (TEEB 2018; Dasgupta 2021). A TCA assessment can be done at different levels: a food system, a policy, a region, an organization, an investment or a product (Baker et al. 2020). An overview of the approach and tools available is presented in Annex 1.

A TCA assessment typically starts by identifying the goal and scope of the assessment, establishing the unit of analysis and the system boundaries. Then, various externalities are assessed (qualitatively or quantitatively), valued and aggregated (TEEB 2018; Impact Institute 2019). It should be noted that the maturity of methods and data for measuring, valuing and attributing externalities varies greatly. The quantification of carbon emissions is relatively mature, whereas the quantification of health externalities is quite young and involves substantial uncertainty (Gemmill-Herren et al. 2021).

There is limited information available at this scale due to the young nature of TCA, the complexity of food chains and the large variety of disciplines and data required. Although TCA results will never be perfect or entirely objective, TCA provides actors in the food chain with much better information about the value of food than they currently have. However, given the ubiquity of externalities, the complexity of TCA, and the significant interests involved, actors in food systems need an abundant supply of affordable, comparable and reliable TCA information.

Available estimates (FOLU 2019) approximate the annual external costs of the global food system due to GHG emissions at 1.5 trillion (2018) USD, other 'natural capital costs' at 1.7 trillion USD and "Pollution, Pesticides & Anti-Microbial Resistance" at 2.1 trillion USD. The 2019 FOLU study estimated health costs due to obesity at 2.7 USD. An exploratory calculation by van Nieuwkoop (2019) estimated the annual external costs of the food system to be at least 6 trillion USD. A study by FAO (2015) estimated the natural capital costs of crop production at around 1.15 trillion USD.

# 4 Estimating the True Costs of Food Systems in the Context of the UNFSS Aspirations

A novel analysis was conducted by a working group of the UNFSS Scientific Group to estimate the true costs of the current food system and estimate the costs of changes towards a more sustainable system. The work brought together diverse sources of data and approaches. The core unit of analysis was the global food system, consisting of global food consumption and production, divided by country and food group. The environmental and health externalities (listed in Table 2) were
<table><caption>**Table 2** Data included in the study</caption><thead><tr><th>Type of externality</th><th>Externality</th><th>Endpoint impact(s)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="6">Environmental</td><td>GHG-emissions</td><td>Contribution to climate change</td></tr><tr><td>Nitrogen water pollution</td><td>Biodiversity loss</td></tr><tr><td>Phosphorus water pollution</td><td>Biodiversity loss</td></tr><tr><td>Scarce blue water use</td><td>Depletion of scarce water</td></tr><tr><td>Land-use</td><td>Biodiversity, ecosystem services</td></tr><tr><td>Air pollution (NH3)</td><td>Mortality and disability</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Health (human life)</td><td>Contribution to cardiovascular diseases</td><td>Mortality</td></tr><tr><td>Contribution to diabetes mellitus type 2</td><td>Mortality</td></tr><tr><td>Contribution to neoplasms (cancers)</td><td>Mortality</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Health (economic costs)</td><td>Contribution to cardiovascular diseases</td><td>Medical costs, informal care, lost working days</td></tr><tr><td>Contribution to diabetes mellitus type 2</td><td>Medical costs, informal care, lost working days</td></tr><tr><td>Contribution to neoplasms</td><td>Medical costs, informal care, lost working days</td></tr></tbody></table>

estimated based on the externalities for which data were available at this scale and level of granularity. The current analysis excluded economic externalities, social externalities, some environmental externalities (soil degradation, depletion of non-renewable resources, land use other than cropland, overuse of renewable resources and other air pollutants than NH₃), and health costs such as antibiotic resistance, zoonoses and undernutrition, as well as productivity losses due to disease. Although these are important sources of externalities, time, data availability, data coverage and compatibility limited the inclusion of these costs. In particular, the requirement that data be available per food group excluded many externalities.

The value chain scope for environmental externalities was primary production, feed for animal products, and inputs such as nitrogen and phosphate. Transportation, processing and food preparation costs were not considered in the analysis. Previous studies have shown that the vast majority of environmental externalities are in the primary process (FAO 2015; Baltussen et al. 2016).

Many data sources and methods were used to quantify the externalities, including Afshin et al. (2019) and Springmann et al. (2018b) to quantify the health impacts and Pozzer et al. (2017), Schipper et al. (2020), Willett et al. (2019) and WWF (2020) to quantify the environmental impacts. The effects were modeled per food group, as set out in Willett et al. (2019) health reference diet. Consumption per food group was based on expenditure. Production was based on production data per country and food group, but is presented here as an aggregate for the world. The environmental effects of imports were based on a global average of the environmental effects of exports per food group.
The monetization of environmental externalities was based on country-level monetization factors for restoration and compensation costs. The methodology adopted has been described by Galgani et al. (2021). A single median global value was used to monetize the loss of human life, based on a meta-study by the OECD (2012) on the value of a statistical life. An average value was used to estimate the direct and indirect economic effects of health loss.

The true annual cost of food was estimated to be around 7 trillion USD (range 4–11) for environmental costs, 11 trillion USD (range 3–39) in costs to human life and 1 trillion USD (range 0.2–1.8) in economic costs (Fig. 1). the annual estimate is based on the most recently available data.

Figure 2 shows that the mean estimate for the total cost of food was 29 trillion USD per year. Given that the current cost of food at current market prices is 9 trillion USD, the results show that the true cost of food is disproportionally high. There is substantial uncertainty in the estimates, particularly for the health costs, as impact pathways have not been extensively studied. The counterfactual is not self-evident, and externalities relate more to diets than to products. In addition, it should be stressed that this is not a complete picture, as some relevant externalities are not yet included, as indicated above.

Among the highest environmental costs are GHG emissions that lead to climate change; land use and land-use change that lead to the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity; and air pollution that leads to, amongst other things, loss of biodiversity and degradation of human health (Fig. 3).

It should be noted that there is substantial uncertainty in these, as well as in other existing estimates of the external costs of food, due to (i) an incomplete coverage of impacts, (ii) major uncertainties in primary data, (iii) uncertainties in trade data, (iv) uncertainties in the modeling of impact pathways and (v) uncertainty in the monetization of external costs. An uncertainty range was created for the results based on footprint and valuation uncertainty. Given that not all uncertainties can be captured and not all sources quantify their uncertainty, the ranges should be interpreted comparatively.

<figure><img src="image_120.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 1** The annual true cost of food for the globe. Note: The bar represents the range of possible costs</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_121.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 2** Mean estimate of the total annual true cost of food, including the external costs in the scope of the analysis. Note: This estimate excludes relevant externalities, and estimates of included externalities include uncertainty</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_122.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 3** Breakdown of the annual environmental cost of food systems</figcaption></figure>

Environmental impact pathways that have high uncertainty include biodiversity and pollution. Quantifying and valuing the health impacts of diets is a novel field, and methodological choices around attribution, the rationality of consumers, the reference scenario and the valuation of a statistical life affect the estimates. Currently, no quantified dietary guide is available to support the analysis of achieving the ambitions of the UNFSS. This is an area that requires more attention and quantification.

Further research is required to include relevant externalities related to undernutrition (which ultimately affects human productivity and incomes), zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), productivity losses due to diseases, soil degradation, land use other than cropland, and depleted resources. In addition, it is important to add social costs such as underpayment of workers, underearning of farmers, child labor and harassment throughout the value chain.
# 5 Potential Benefits of a Transition to More Sustainable Diets

Effective policy interventions for redesigning the economics of food also require an understanding of the effects of possible transitions on environmental and health externalities, as well as affordability. Such interventions involve realizing multiple goals and making trade-offs, which can be managed by developing well-planned transition pathways, carefully monitoring key indicators, and implementing transparent science targets at the local level (Herrero et al. 2021).

Hence, in addition to estimating current global external environmental and health costs of food, the working group also explored the potential benefits on health and the environment of dietary shifts and their implications for affordability. Due to a lack of availability of recent international dietary guidelines, the analysis used the only available EAT-Lancet alternative diets (Springmann et al. 2018a). The working group in no way promotes these as recommended diets. The EAT-Lancet's recommended dietary patterns were based on the assumption that plant food production is more environmentally sustainable compared to animal food production, primarily based on considerations of land and water use, energy conversion and GHG emissions. However, these recommended diets do not consider differences in protein quality and nutrient bioavailability (Moughan 2021). Still, the EAT-Lancet pescatarian, vegetarian and vegan diets offer a comparison to a healthy reference diet.

For illustrative purposes, the analysis of shifting consumption patterns to align with these four dietary alternatives showed that significant gains could be achieved in reducing environmental and health costs (Fig. 4). However, these shifts do increase the average cost of food, albeit at a small fraction of the gains.

<figure><img src="image_123.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 4** Costs and benefits of potential dietary shifts. REF Healthy Referencek diet, PSC pescatarian, VEG vegetarian, VGN vegan diets</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_124.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 5** Health benefits of potential dietary shifts. REF Healthy Reference diet, PSC pescatarian, VEG vegetarian, VGN vegan diets</figcaption></figure>

The health benefits of global dietary shifts are potentially substantial (Fig. 5). Ensuring the affordability of (healthy) food for all requires detailed analysis about how any interventions affect the poorest groups in society. The current analysis does not cover the distributional effects of dietary shifts. This represents a critical area for future research.

# 6 Study Limitations

The methodology applied to estimate the true costs of the global food system and alternative diets has the following limitations:

* The environmental cost of dietary shifts did not take household food waste into account. The results were based on dietary guidelines for consumption.

* All scenarios were based on the environmental footprints per kg of product in the current system. Potential reductions in footprints due to a change in cultivation techniques were not taken into account.

* For the land-use of animal products, pastureland was not included. The biomes used for growing the feed and the mean species abundance of the land used were determined from global averages of these data for products frequently used as feed (mainly cereal products). For processed food products such as vegetable oils and sugar, the biomes used and the mean species abundance were estimated by averages within the country.

* Air pollution emissions referred to the agricultural sector as a whole, and not only food production.

* The impact of food safety on human health and food waste has not been considered, but is a cause of significant disease and mortalities.

* The effect of food production on AMR was not covered in the analysis. According to the AMR review (O'Neill 2016), each year, at least 700,000 deaths
are caused by AMR, which corresponds to a cost of 2.3 trillion USD using the same valuation approach as for other health impacts in this study. A substantial part of this is likely due to food production, but it is currently not clear how much.

* The bioavailability and quality of protein and nutrients were not considered in the dietary shifts, but they are important considerations for future research.

# 7 Recommendations

Given the high costs to the environment and human health presented in these findings, it is essential that UNFSS stakeholders actively identify externalities that represent ‘hidden costs’ in the food system and those that ignore or incentivize unsustainable and unhealthy food systems. These costs need to be quantified through TCA practices and pathways identified to reduce or eliminate these externalities through policies that: (i) internalize externalities and (ii) sanction those food system stakeholders who do not take appropriate steps to reduce and internalize these costs and/or incentivize those who do. Estimating the full scope of these costs is a priority for determining if such an adjustment to the food system would increase food prices to a point where a reassessment of poverty lines is necessary to ensure access to healthy diets for the poorest.

In the short term, policymakers can remove the barriers for stakeholders to engage in TCA and use TCA data to redefine the value of food to reflect its true costs and benefits. In particular, governments and other UNFSS stakeholders can:

* **Foster internationally accepted harmonized TCA principles across all applications.** Together, experts, practitioners and stakeholders from all fields in food and agriculture can develop harmonized TCA principles to ensure validity and comparability of results and alignment among the various levels,

* **Educate and build capacity among professionals in business and government around TCA.** It is important that the new discipline of TCA be built. Harmonized principles are necessary to bring experts and practitioners from all fields together. In addition, TCA can be integrated into educational systems, and current food professionals in government, civil society and business can be educated in TCA.

* **Provide professionals in business and governments with concrete tools to facilitate TCA.** Lowering the entry barriers of professionals to the complex field of TCA can be facilitated by providing practical skills and approaches (toolboxes) for analysis.

In the medium and long term, governments can look at ways to integrate TCA into economic metrics at all levels systematically:

* **Integrate TCA into national accounts and GDP.** This can provide a standardized account of how much inclusive welfare (realized welfare and changes in wealth) was created. This would provide a much better view of how the food sector contributes to welfare.
* **Integrate TCA into business sustainability reporting and controls.** By adding TCA information into their internal and external financial reports, businesses can compile impact-weighted accounts and impact statements, enabling them to report and manage the value that they create to all stakeholders via all capitals.

* **Integrate TCA into product labeling.** Products themselves can educate their customers as to their true costs (in monetized terms), as well as their true value (in monetized terms or otherwise).

Finally, policymakers can start to explore first-best mechanisms for the medium term:

* **Generate a global agreement and create public-private partnerships around a roadmap to realize the SDGs by 2030 and reach fully sustainable food systems by 2050,** providing affordable and healthy food without environmental, social and health-related costs.

## Annex 1: How Does True-Cost Accounting Work?

A TCA assessment can be done at different levels: a food system, a policy, a region, an organization, an investment or a product (Baker et al. 2020). For each type of analysis, various frameworks exist. One major system-level framework is TEEB for Agriculture and Food (TEEB 2018). Recently, Lord (2020) also published a methodology for food systems analysis. These frameworks can be applied at other levels. At the regional level, the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting provides a mature framework for natural capital valuation (UN 2021a, b). For other aspects, few well-accepted frameworks exist (Hoekstra 2019), although inclusive wealth is a promising approach (Dasgupta 2021). Various TCA frameworks are being developed for the organizational level, often focusing on corporate reporting (Natural Capital Coalition 2021; Impact Institute 2019). Also, frameworks have been developed specifically for products such as coffee and bananas (Serafeim and Trin 2020; Galgani et al. 2021) and investments (Addy et al. 2019; Olsen 2020; Impact Institute 2020).

A TCA assessment starts by defining the goal, scope and unit of analysis ('functional unit'). Consequently, the relevant externalities have to be identified. Once these externalities have been identified, they have to be assessed, qualitatively or quantitatively. Quantification starts with measuring or assessing inputs and outputs, the direct measurable effects of production and consumption (Impact Institute 2020). These inputs and outputs can be measured using primary data. In practice, inputs and outputs often have to be estimated with macro-level models through (environmentally) Extended Input-Output and Computable General Equilibrium models (Malik et al. 2018), micro-level models such as life-cycle accounting (LCA) (Hauschild et al. 2018) and social LCA (Huertas-Valdivia et al. 2020), or through hybrid approaches (Nakamura and Nansai 2016). Consequently, these outputs have to be translated into impacts via impact pathways (Impact Institute 2019).
For many environmental externalities, there are databases for such pathways, such as those based on Recipe (Huijbregts et al. 2016), although pathways for ecosystem and biodiversity are more complex (TEEB 2018; Dasgupta 2021). Impact pathways for social and, in particular, health externalities are less mature. If the functional unit is a product, investment or organization, the final quantification step is the attribution of impact to the functional unit (Capitals Coalition 2021a; Impact Institute 2020; VBA 2021). This process yields quantified impacts in *natural units*, such as CO2-equivalents, liters of scarce blue water extraction or loss mean species abundance for environmental externalities, full-time equivalents (FTE) of child labor, FTE of forced labor and underpayment for social externalities, and disability adjusted life years (years of life lost + years lived with a disability) for health externalities.

After externalities have been quantified, they can be valued, in monetary terms or otherwise, so that they are expressed in a common unit. To capture value not reflected in market prices, a TCA assessment requires an (implicit or explicit) measure of welfare. Although terminology differs significantly in the literature, there is wide recognition that multiple dimensions exist (Stiglitz et al. 2018), and common welfare dimensions include:

* The preference satisfaction or well-being of people (Stiglitz et al. 2018; TEEB 2018; Dasgupta 2021; Impact Institute 2020).

* An equitable distribution of income and other resources (Stiglitz et al. 2018).

* Adherence to social limits such as a living wage, labor standards and the right to food security, which can be derived from human rights. (TEEB 2018).

* Adherence to environmental limits, such as the conservation of climate, abiotic resources and biodiversity. These limits can be derived from planetary boundaries for a livable planet (Rockström et al. 2009; Stiglitz et al. 2018), the intrinsic value of nature (TEEB 2018) and/or the rights of current and future generations.

The first dimension generally coincides with traditional measures of ordinal or cardinal utility that economists have used to measure collective welfare (Van Praag 1991; Galgani et al. 2021). The second dimension is linked to traditional measures of income inequality such as the GINI coefficient (Bowles and Carlin 2020). Nonetheless, these measures cannot accommodate central issues of sustainability, such as biophysical limits, human rights, social equity and intergenerational equity (Dore and Burton 2003; Gowdy and Erickson 2005). Hence, the valuation of environmental and social damages has met with resistance from non-economists, policymakers and civil society (McCauley 2006). As a result, in TCA, additional welfare dimensions emerged (Stiglitz et al. 2018; TEEB 2018; Impact Institute 2020). Depending on the welfare dimension, different valuation methods, such as cardinal utility, abatement costs, shadow pricing or remediation costs, are used (Galgani et al. 2021). A relevant discussion point is to which degree externalities can be summed and netted. Economists would traditionally sum all positive and negative externalities into one number, whereas some TCA frameworks hold that welfare dimensions ought to be considered separately (Stiglitz et al. 2018; Impact Institute 2019) and human rights violations or deforestation cannot be offset by an equal amount of profit, for example (Capitals Coalition 2021a).
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**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# The Cost and Affordability of Preparing a Basic Meal Around the World

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Check for
updates

William A. Masters, Elena M. Martinez, Friederike Greb, Anna Herforth, and Sheryl L. Hendriks

## 1 Introduction

A nutritious diet is essential for an active and healthy life, but is unaffordable for about 3 billion people, almost 40% of the world's population, who have insufficient income to afford enough of even the least costly foods needed for a healthy diet (FAO et al. 2020). The unaffordability of nutritious foods prevents many people from consuming a healthy diet, but market prices for raw agricultural produce are not the only barrier to improved diet quality. To form an inclusive and sustainable food system for all, policies and programs should address other obstacles, such as:

* the time burden and fuel use needed to cook safe and nutritious meals at home, especially in households with poor kitchen facilities and other constraints,

W. A. Masters (✉)

Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

e-mail: William.Masters@tufts.edu

E. M. Martinez

Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

F. Greb

Research, Assessment and Monitoring Division of the World Food Programme (WFP),
Rome, Italy

A. Herforth

Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

S. L. Hendriks

Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development,
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
* high prices of healthy items that would be lightly processed in ways that preserve and enhance nutritional value while reducing the time and fuel required for meal preparation, and

* the rapidly growing availability of ultra-processed foods whose convenience, taste and brand reputation meet some of peoples' immediate wants and needs, but are linked to displacement of minimally processed foods and diet-related disease later in life.

This chapter extends earlier work on market prices such as Bai et al. (2021b), Herforth et al. (2020), Hirvonen et al. (2020), Masters et al. (2018), and others, to consider the hidden costs of meal preparation, including home-cooked versus pre-cooked versions of similar foods, as well as the relative costs of plant- and animal-sourced ingredients.

Focusing on the hidden costs of meal preparation that affect food choice complements other work on true cost accounting, including research on external harms from unhealthy or unsustainable foods and cooking methods, as well as the external benefits of healthier or more sustainable practices, as described in a separate chapter of this book. In that chapter, we use the data and methods developed for SOFI 2020 and related work from a larger project on Food Prices for Nutrition (2021).

To illustrate how meal preparation costs could influence food choice, we use the “Basic Plate” approach developed by the World Food Programme (WFP 2017), identifying the most affordable ingredients for a typical meal that might be consumed in any country of the world. The baseline meal consists of a starchy staple made from 75 g of a dry cereal grain or equivalent, accompanied by a bean or lentil stew made from 57.25 g of dry pulses, cooked with onions (16.25 g) and tomatoes (55 g) in a vegetable oil (28.13 g). Such a meal would contain about one-third of an adult’s daily energy requirement, and is not itself a healthy diet. To meet all needs, a person’s overall diet would require greater diversity, including additional vegetables and fruits, but those complements to the basic meal are often more location-specific, as shown in our previous work, such as Herforth et al. (2020).

Measuring the market prices and hidden costs of preparing a single basic plate allows us to begin addressing the diverse costs of meal preparation, accounting for differences across countries and among households in time use, cooking fuel and other aspects of nutrient preservation and delivery. Using global data, we compare the most affordable basic plate with pulses to alternative meals that use animal-sourced foods (red meat, poultry, or fish), and alternative meals that would reduce the energy and time required for meal preparation by using lightly processed, often pre-cooked versions of various foods such as bread or canned fish, beans, and tomatoes.

The composition of each basic plate used for this study is shown in Table 1. To begin, we identify the most affordable items from which to prepare these basic plates in 168 countries around the world, using nationally representative retail prices for calendar year 2017 provided by government statistical organizations through the World Bank's International Comparison Program (ICP 2021). Details on the food items are shown in annex Tables A1 and A2, while the least costly items in each
<table><caption>**Table 1** Basic and alternative versions of the WFP plate of food</caption><thead><tr><th>Basic plate</th><th>Animal-sourced foods</th><th>Lightly processed foods</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Pulses & beans<br>Plant oils<br>Onions<br>Tomatoes<br>Starchy staples</td><td>Replace pulses with animal-sourced foods, including red meat, poultry, and fish</td><td>Replace raw with pre-cooked foods such as canned beans instead of dry pulses, canned tomatoes or fish instead of fresh or dried and salted fish, and bread instead of other starchy staples</td></tr></tbody></table>

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Note: Each basic plate allows for substitution of the most affordable item available in that country for the starchy staple (75 g of a dry cereal grain or equivalent, totaling 270 kcal) with a stew made from pulses (57.25 g of a dry bean or equivalent, totaling 191 kcal), tomatoes (55 g = 10 kcal) and onion (16.25 g = 6.5 kcal) in vegetable oil (28.1 g = 242 kcal). Available foods and their prices are from ICP (2021), matched to food composition using methods detailed in Food Prices for Nutrition (2021)
country drawn from the candidate foods in each category are listed in Tables A3 and A4.

To assess affordability, we divided the cost of each plate by average total spending per person in that country, as measured by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita in real purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. All prices and costs reported here are in PPP dollars for 2017, so they can be directly compared to the international poverty line of $1.90/day and other benchmarks expressed in real PPP dollars. As shown in Table 2, we find that the average cost of the most affordable items with which to prepare the basic plate is $0.71, excluding costs of meal preparation. Choosing lightly processed, often pre-cooked foods such as canned beans, fish or tomatoes and bread more than doubles that cost to $1.77/day. Substituting animal-source foods also raises the cost substantially to $1.03 for a plate with red meat, $1.07 with poultry, and $1.30 with fish. For the plates with animal-sourced foods, however, the pre-cooked or more convenient foods are actually less costly at face value.

The cost of each of the basic and alternative plates generally takes a small portion of each country's total national average income, but it takes a large fraction of the international poverty line at $1.90/day and often exceeds the daily income of resource-poor households. In one-fourth of countries where these foods are least affordable, the basic plate costs about 6% or more of average daily income, meaning the value of all goods and services in that society. That cost rises to 20% of all goods and services if the meal is made with lightly processed items and 10% of all goods and services if the plate includes red meat, poultry or fish. The plate is also slightly more expensive when using fresh fish instead of tinned fish (Fig. 1).

When considering the cost per meal shown above, it is important to note that this basic plate meets about one-third of daily caloric needs in a safe and acceptable manner, but other foods would be needed to meet nutritional needs for an active and healthy life. For example, comparing this basic meal to an entire day's diet that would meet requirements specified in a variety of national food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs), the meal contains about 80% of what would be an entire day's recommended intake of vegetable oil (28 out of 35 g in a typical FBDG), but only 23% of the day's protein-rich foods (57 of 250 g), and 24% of the day's vegetables (71 of 300 g), as well as none of the recommended fruit or dairy and other foods. Analysis of the overall cost of a healthy diet is outside the scope of this chapter and is addressed in earlier work, such as Herforth et al. (2020).

<table><caption>**Table 2** Global average cost per day of the WFP basic plate and alternatives (2017 USD)</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th>Basic plate</th><th colspan="3">With animal-source foods</th></tr><tr><th>Pulses</th><th>Red meat</th><th>Poultry</th><th>Fish</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>With most affordable items</th><td>0.71</td><td>1.03</td><td>1.07</td><td>1.30</td></tr><tr><th>With pre-cooked, packaged items</th><td>1.77</td><td>1.03</td><td>1.16</td><td>1.32</td></tr><tr><th>With raw or whole items</th><td>0.73</td><td>1.44</td><td>1.21</td><td>2.64</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: Data shown are the mean over 168 countries for which all required data are available
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Note: Data shown are the range of meal costs across 168 countries with available data. For each type of meal, the box shows median meal costs and its interquartile range from the 25th to 75th percentile (at the middle, top and bottom of each box), and whiskers show the outer range of 1.5 times that interquartile range. Outliers beyond the range are omitted for visual clarity

<caption>**Fig. 1** Global range of costs of the WFP basic plate and alternatives (2017 USD)</caption>

## 2 Price Premiums for the Most Affordable Items in Each Category

To address food choice within the overall diet, we examine the added cost of lightly processed items and alternative proteins at the item level. Pulses are only slightly more costly than starchy staples per calorie (a difference of about $0.001/kcal, or $0.10 per 100 kcal). Red meat and poultry are about $0.50 per 100 kcal more expensive than starchy staples, as are onions, while including tomatoes adds roughly $1.80 per 100 kcal. All of those premiums are for the raw form of the product.

Using canned beans instead of dry beans adds as much cost as switching to red meat or poultry, which have about the same cost in whole raw form versus a lightly processed and packaged version (for example, ground beef is not systematically more or less expensive than beef for stew). On the other hand, fish and tomatoes are much less expensive when purchased in lightly processed canned form, making tinned fish about the same cost per 100 kcal as uncooked raw red meat or poultry (Fig. 2).
<figure><img src="image_131.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2 Average premium required to obtain the least costly item with each attribute</figcaption></figure>

## 3 The Hidden Cost of Home Cooking: Time and Fuel Use

Our analysis of ingredient prices reveals that preparing a basic plate with pre-cooked pulses such as canned beans is much more expensive than the plate with dried pulses, while the same with canned fish is less expensive than with fresh fish. Moreover, preparing the plate with pre-cooked pulses raises its costs beyond using the most affordable fish as the protein component. Given the high preparation time and cost of cooking for meals using dried pulses, and the high environmental impacts of animal-sourced food production, the high cost of helpful, healthy processing could be an important obstacle to inclusive and sustainable dietary transformation.

Data on the time and resources required for food acquisition and meal preparation across countries are not yet available. Still, we can begin to illustrate differences in the cost of meal preparation by focusing on energy use for cooking beans in East Africa, extending our previous research on food price variation in this region (Bai et al. 2020). We focus on the portion of the pulse in the basic plate, because preparing and cooking dry beans for a meal requires considerable time and fuel. Home-cooked beans have similar nutritional composition to tinned beans that are available in retail food outlets. We cannot account for all factors that go into meal preparation, but can use this example to address differences in fuel cost as one influence on the cost and affordability of each food.
To compare the cost of cooking beans or other pulses, we focus on the fuel needed to cook dry beans in East Africa, as estimated by MECS (2019), which is a simplified version of more detailed analyses such as Nerini et al. (2017). To compute fuel cost per serving, we consider the quantity of fuel needed to cook 500 g of dry beans (enough for 8.7 servings in the basic plate), which is estimated by MECS (2019) to require 0.675 kg of charcoal, 0.2 kg of gas (LPG), or 1.5 kWh of electricity when using the most common, conventional types of stove in this region. On a per-serving basis, that amounts to 77 g of charcoal, 23 g of LPG gas, or 0.17 kWh. We applied this estimate to six East African countries that are likely to use similar food preparation technologies and techniques – Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The mix of fuels and cooking methods actually used vary widely, with the fraction of households that have access to electricity in 2017 ranging from a majority of households in Kenya (63.6) to a smaller proportion in Ethiopia (44.3), Rwanda (34.1), Tanzania (32.7), Uganda (31.8) and Burundi (9.3), as reported in World Bank (2021).

For each country, we compare the fuel costs for cooking to the cost of the food itself. In each case, the least costly pulse in the dataset is spotted beans, whose nationally-representative cost per 57 g serving in 2017 USD ranged from 8.6 cents in Rwanda to 17.2 cents in Ethiopia. We then compare that to the cost of each type of fuel. The results shown in Fig. 3 reveal no consistent ranking in fuel costs, but in two cases (Rwanda electricity and Uganda gas), the cost of fuel exceeds the cost of the beans themselves.

Our analysis so far focuses only on meal costs at national average market prices for ingredients and fuel. How each food is actually cooked varies with household circumstances, including the availability of kitchen equipment, local variation in costs at each time and place, and cultural or demographic factors that influence each household's division of labor related to meal preparation. Home cooking may also impose large health costs from indoor smoke, and how foods are prepared and served or stored can also have important consequences for foodborne illness and food waste, as well as externalities associated with deforestation and emissions. Reducing the inequities and total costs associated with inefficient cooking might sometimes be possible with innovations in food processing that would preserve and even enhance the nutritional value of foods. For the basic meal with pulses in East Africa, however, using canned beans would cost roughly 3–4 times the cost of dry beans, plus the required cooking fuel, at a price per serving that ranges from $1.25 in Kenya to $1.37 in Tanzania, $1.42 in Burundi and Ethiopia, $1.55 in Uganda and $1.66 in Rwanda.

This case study is just one small step towards including the costs of meal preparation in future work on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet. In so doing, we build on a long and diverse literature on meal preparation as a determinant of diet quality and health outcomes and studies of cooking fuel as a driver of household health and environmental harms. Regarding diet quality in low- and middle-income countries, the recent literature was pioneered by Kennedy and Reardon (1994) on how urbanization in Kenya and Burkina Faso led to shifts from coarse to refined grains, and includes many papers on how time use in rural
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Note: Data shown are the nationally-representative retail price of 57.25g for the most affordable kind of pulse, which, in each country, is spotted beans, compared to the cost of fuel use quantities from MECS (2019) and prices from ICP (2021), as detailed in the text.

<caption>**Fig. 3** Cost per serving of the most affordable pulse and fuel for a plate of beans in East Africa</caption>

households relates to nutrition as reviewed by Johnston et al. (2018), plus later contributions on time use that include Seymour et al. (2019, 2020) and Vemireddy and Pingali (2021). Similar issues arise in studies of time use and diet quality for higher-income settings, such as Raschke (2012), Smith et al. (2013), Yang et al. (2015), and Carpio et al. (2020) in the US, or Mackay et al. (2017) in New Zealand. Regarding the health effects of indoor smoke and the environmental consequences of wood and charcoal, several studies address the prevalence of each fuel type and the drivers of change (Heltberg 2004; Bonjour et al. 2013; Shupler et al. 2019), in some cases tracing their effects to time management and fuel choice (Anderman et al. 2015).

This chapter links meal preparation to the cost and affordability of healthier diets, focusing on the relative cost of raw ingredients as opposed to pre-cooked and packaged foods, and comparing the ingredient costs to fuel costs for beans in East Africa.
Africa. To address how the costs of meal preparation and the increasing availability of processed foods affect food choice, it will be especially important to identify forms of food processing that preserve and enhance nutritional values, as opposed to the growing health risks associated with existing types of ultra-processed food that have been shown in observational studies reviewed by Pagliai et al. (2021) and Lane et al. (2021), as well as one randomized control trial. The need for policies and programs to distinguish between healthier and less healthy packaged foods is important for the food safety agenda (Jaffee et al. 2020), and could help ensure that food system transformations bring healthy and nutritious diets within reach for all people at all times, in every country of the world.

# 4 Opportunities for Action

A basic plate of healthy food is unaffordable for many of the world's most resource-poor households, due not only to the high cost of growing or purchasing raw ingredients, but also the high cost of meal preparation within the home. Government policies and programs could build on past work such as the SOFI 2020 report, CFS (2021) and other initiatives to ensure food security for all through two specific kinds of action suggested by our findings:

1. **revised poverty lines and safety nets** to ensure that all people at all times can acquire the foods needed for a healthy diet, using locally appropriate criteria for targeting and forms of assistance, including cash transfers, vouchers and in-kind assistance; and

2. **improved cooking and processing** to reduce the health and environmental burdens of meal preparation, for example, through electrification using renewable energy sources, as well as support for helpful processing that preserves the nutritional value of foods, in distinction to ultra-processing that may remove beneficial components and add attributes that are associated with illness later in life, and displacement of minimally processed healthy foods.

The first of these potential game-changers calls on governments to make healthy diets affordable for all by using the minimal cost of a healthy diet to examine food poverty thresholds and inform eligibility for nutritional safety nets that provide cash transfers, vouchers, or in-kind support to supplement a household's own income or food production. Safety nets designed around access to a healthy diet can be the foundation for social inclusion, using twenty-first century data analysis to target and deliver assistance in all countries of the world. Recent improvements in market monitoring and analysis of diet costs allow governments to target and deliver nutrition assistance tailored to local needs, with food-based poverty lines to guide programme design parameters suited to each population, targeting by demographic group and delivering through locally adapted instruments, including cash, vouchers and in-kind assistance. As noted by Hendriks (2018), making healthy diets affordable by tackling poverty is a necessary, but not sufficient, step towards food security
and nutrition, which also requires improvements in the quality and price of available
foods to enable behavior change for food and nutrition security of all people at all
times.

The second of these game-changers addresses hidden costs in the “last mile” of food security for households to acquire foods and prepare each meal. Food acquisition and preparation often places high burdens on caregivers’ time and can impose additional financial costs for cooking fuel, equipment, and transportation. Governments should support the development of infrastructure that will reduce the burden of food acquisition and preparation, such as rural electrification, and support agri-food processing that reduces the time and fuel cost of home cooking while preserving the nutritional value of foods.

The main action step within the food system is to distinguish between helpful processing that preserves or even adds to the healthfulness of food versus harmful ultra-processing that transforms food, removing healthful aspects of foods such as whole grains and sometimes adding health risk factors such as refined carbohydrates and sugars, sodium, and trans fats. Actively making that distinction allows for support for the helpful kinds of healthy processing, often by local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while also using regulation and taxation to limit harmful forms of ultra-processing.

To guide these interventions, governments will need to continue investing in improved data collection regarding food prices, the externalities involved in true cost accounting, and the hidden costs of food acquisition and meal preparation within the home. Governments routinely collect nationally-representative market prices for a variety of foods each month to calculate their consumer price indexes, and international agencies such as the WFP, FAO and FEWS NET also collect rural market prices to target food assistance (Bai et al. 2021a). The World Bank is expanding its global office so that the ICP can focus on food prices and diet costs, in collaboration with national statistical organizations around the world (Food Prices for Nutrition 2021).

As shown in this chapter, governments can complement this work with attention to other barriers to affordability beyond market prices, such as the time and resources required for food acquisition, meal preparation and the use of cooking fuel. Accurately measuring these hidden costs is also helpful for true cost accounting of externalities associated with the environmental footprint of food production, processing, and distribution, as well as the health effects of food consumption. These costs differ among different types of agricultural ingredients, and also differ among types of processing. The hidden costs of meal preparation, as well as the environmental costs and health burden associated with diet-related disease, call for attention not only to different kinds of farm production, but also to a new kind of distinction between helpful, healthy kinds of food processing and ultra-processed foods that are an increasingly important cause of diet-related disease around the world.

In summary, the data described in this chapter lead to two game-changing actions:

(i) the establishment of poverty lines and safety nets informed by the cost of a healthy diet to ensure that all people at all times can acquire the foods needed for
lifelong health, using appropriate targeting and forms of assistance, including cash transfers, vouchers, and in-kind assistance; and

(ii) actions to reduce the burden of meal preparation for healthy diets through electrification using renewable energy sources, as well as support for helpful processing that preserves the nutritional value of foods, in distinction to ultra-processing that may remove beneficial components and add attributes that are associated with illness later in life.

Through these actions, governments can use new kinds of data and analytical methods to meet universal needs in locally appropriate ways, thereby ensuring food and nutrition security for all.

## Annex

<table><caption>**Table A1** Reference food items selected to convert food weight (g) to dietary energy (kcal)</caption><thead><tr><td>Food category</td><td>Reference item</td><td>Food name in FCT</td><td>FCT code</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Pulses</td><td>White beans, dried</td><td>Beans, white, mature seeds, raw</td><td>16,049</td></tr><tr><td>Oils</td><td>Vegetable oil</td><td>Vegetable oil, palm kernel</td><td>4513</td></tr><tr><td>Onions</td><td>Fresh onions</td><td>Onions, raw</td><td>11,282</td></tr><tr><td>Tomatoes</td><td>Fresh tomatoes, round</td><td>Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, year-round average</td><td>11,529</td></tr><tr><td>Starchy staples</td><td>Medium-grain rice</td><td>Rice, white, medium-grain raw, unenriched</td><td>20,450</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: FCT code numbers refer to the USDA SR28 database

<table><caption>**Table A2** Energy content of each item for isocaloric substitution within food categories</caption><thead><tr><td>Food category</td><td>Weight (g) per serving</td><td>Kcal per 100 g</td><td>Kcal per serving</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Pulses</td><td>57.25</td><td>333</td><td>190.6</td></tr><tr><td>Oils</td><td>28.13</td><td>862</td><td>242.5</td></tr><tr><td>Onions</td><td>16.25</td><td>40</td><td>6.5</td></tr><tr><td>Tomatoes</td><td>55.00</td><td>18</td><td>9.9</td></tr><tr><td>Starchy staples</td><td>75.00</td><td>360</td><td>270.0</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: The quantity of oil from the original WFP basic plate has been reduced by 10% to more closely approximate daily lipid needs. Substitutions within food categories are among versions of the food with different moisture content, but similar nutrient density per calorie, for example, switching the 270 kcal of carbohydrate-rich starchy staples from dry raw rice grains to potatoes, or the 190.6 kcal of dry beans into 190.6 kcal of canned beans, or switching the 9.9 kcal of whole tomatoes with 9.9 kcal of concentrated tomato paste. Different items in the oils and onions categories are all roughly similar in weight per kcal, so either unit of measure would yield the same result
<table><caption>**Table A3** Macronutrient adequacy of the basic plate</caption><thead><tr><th>Source</th><th>Protein</th><th>Lipids</th><th>Carbohydrates</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Pulses</td><td>13.37</td><td>0.49</td><td>34.50</td></tr><tr><td>Oils</td><td>0.00</td><td>28.13</td><td>0.00</td></tr><tr><td>Onions</td><td>0.18</td><td>0.03</td><td>1.52</td></tr><tr><td>Tomatoes</td><td>0.48</td><td>0.11</td><td>2.14</td></tr><tr><td>Rice</td><td>4.96</td><td>0.44</td><td>59.51</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>18.99</td><td>29.19</td><td>97.67</td></tr><tr><td>Total (kcal)</td><td>76</td><td>263</td><td>391</td></tr><tr><td>Percent of kilocalories</td><td>10.4%</td><td>36.0%</td><td>53.6%</td></tr><tr><td>Acceptable range</td><td>10–35%</td><td>20–35%</td><td>45–65%</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: Data shown are grams of each macronutrient from each food and in total for the basic meal. The bottom row shows the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range (AMDR), as specified by the Dietary Reference Intakes of the U.S. Institute of Medicine (2005). Composition of each food is based on the USDA National Database for Standard Reference, Release 28 (SR-28) and the reference food items listed in Table A1

<table><caption>**Table A4** Items selected for the basic plate and its variants, by food category (n = 152)</caption><thead><tr><th>Food</th><th>Raw (more work required)</th><th>Transformed (less time required)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="20">Starchy staples</td><td>Long-grain rice, not parboiled, WKB</td><td>Short pasta, BL</td></tr><tr><td>Fresh sweet potatoes</td><td>Baguette, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Wheat flour, not self-rising, BL</td><td>Bread, white, loaf, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Brown flour</td><td>Lebanese bread</td></tr><tr><td>Long-grain rice, parboiled, WKB</td><td>Spaghetti, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Maize grains, white</td><td>Egg noodles, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Maize, BL</td><td>Samoon bread</td></tr><tr><td>Wheat</td><td>Instant noodles, any flavor, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Medium-grain rice, BNR</td><td>Dried noodles, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Broken rice, 25%, BNR</td><td>Vermicelli, BL</td></tr><tr><td>Sticky rice, WKB</td><td>Roll, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Short-grain rice, BNR</td><td>Bread, whole wheat, loaf, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Long-grained rice-25–50 KG, BNR</td><td>Round bread</td></tr><tr><td>White rice #3, BNR</td><td>Bread, white, sliced, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Wheat flour, loose, BNR</td><td>Spaghetti, BL</td></tr><tr><td>Corn (maize) flour, white, WKB</td><td>Short pasta, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Maize flour, yellow</td><td>Lasagna (sheets)</td></tr><tr><td>Wholemeal flour, Atta, BL</td><td>Sliced brown bread (AFR)</td></tr><tr><td>Oats, rolled, WKB</td><td>Couscous, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>White rice #1, BNR</td><td>Sliced brown bread (WAS)</td></tr><tr><td>White rice #10, prepacked, BL</td><td>Spaghetti, BARILLA</td></tr><tr><td>Wheat semolina (suji), WKB</td><td>Bread unpacked</td></tr><tr><td>Plantains, fresh green</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Long grain rice, family pack, WKB</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><caption>**Table A4 (continued)**</caption><thead><tr><th>Food</th><th>Raw (more work required)</th><th>Transformed (less time required)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="10">Pulses</td><td>Spotted beans</td><td>Green peas, tinned, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Dried peas, WKB (CIS)</td><td>Hommus</td></tr><tr><td>Peas (AFR)</td><td>White beans in tomato sauce, tinned, HEINZ</td></tr><tr><td>Dhal, Khesari, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Peas (WAS)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Green/mung beans, dried, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Dhal, Split peas, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Dried broad beans</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Moong dahl, loose, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Dhal, Musur, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>White beans, dried, BL</td><td>Canned black beans</td></tr><tr><td>Onions</td><td>Fresh onions</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">Tomatoes</td><td rowspan="2">Fresh tomatoes, round</td><td>Tomato paste, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Tomato paste (large), WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td>Chopped tomatoes, BL</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="8">Oils</td><td>Soybean oil, WKB</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Palm oil unrefined, BL</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Peanut oil, WKB</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Vegetable oil, WKB</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Palm oil, WKB</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Olive oil, extra virgin, WKB</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Sunflower oil, WKB</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Corn oil, WKB</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Cottonseed oil (CIS)</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="15">Fish</td><td>Squid</td><td>Mackerel fillet, tinned, in tomato sauce, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Fresh small sardines</td><td>Dried sardines, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Carp</td><td>Sardines, tinned, with skin, in vegetable oil, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Tuna steaks</td><td>Salty herring (CIS)</td></tr><tr><td>Rainbow-trout (Salmo gairdneri)</td><td>Tuna flakes, tinned, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Red snapper</td><td>Dried small fish, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Mackerel, un-cleaned</td><td>Mackerel fillet, tinned, in vegetable oil, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Tilapia</td><td>Dried Machoiron, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Sea bass</td><td>Dried shrimp, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Red snapper (AFR)</td><td>Fishball, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Cod (gadus morhua)</td><td>Salted and semi-dried fish, BL</td></tr><tr><td>Tuna steak</td><td>Mackerel in vegetable oil, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Shrimp, whole, fresh</td><td>Sardines in tomato sauce, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Small fresh fish</td><td>Smoked shrimp/prawns, BNR</td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><caption>**Table A4 (continued)**</caption><thead><tr><th>Food</th><th>Raw (more work required)</th><th>Transformed (less time required)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>Catfish</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Fissikh</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Black pomfret</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Tuna</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Sunflower oil, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="7">Poultry</td><td>Chicken, whole, fresh</td><td>Chicken, whole, frozen</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken legs</td><td>Chicken burger</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken, live</td><td>Chicken, non-specific cuts, frozen</td></tr><tr><td>Whole duck, fresh</td><td>Canned chicken</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken breast, with skin and bones</td><td>Breakfast sausage, chicken, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Native house chicken, fresh</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Chicken wings (WAS)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Chicken, traditionally bred, live</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Chicken, non-specific cuts, fresh</td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="20">Red meat</td><td>Beef, center brisket</td><td>Sausage</td></tr><tr><td>Beef liver, BNR</td><td>Sausages, whole/frankfurter</td></tr><tr><td>Pork, loin chop</td><td>Beef, minced</td></tr><tr><td>Veal breast, with bones</td><td>BEEF SAUSAGE</td></tr><tr><td>Pork, belly (C)</td><td>Salami, sold loose</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, rump steak</td><td>Pork ham, pressed, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Sirloin steak</td><td>Bacon, smoked, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Lamb, whole leg</td><td>Luncheon meat</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, with bones</td><td>Canned beef, chunks, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Pork, shoulder</td><td>Sliced ham, pork, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Pork, ribs</td><td>Beef merguez (spiced)</td></tr><tr><td>Pork liver, BNR</td><td>Burger</td></tr><tr><td>Mutton, mixed cut</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Mutton tripe</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Pork thigh, with bones</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Pork, fillet</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Beef without bones</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Mutton chop</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><caption>**Table A5** Candidate food items whose prices and availability are reported in ICP 2017</caption><thead><tr><th>Food</th><th>Raw (more work required)</th><th>Transformed (less work required)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="12">Pulses</td><td>Dhal, Khesari, BL</td><td>Canned black beans</td></tr><tr><td>Dhal, Musur, BL</td><td>Foul Medammas, canned</td></tr><tr><td>Dhal, Split peas, BL</td><td>Frozen peas, small/fine, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Dried broad beans</td><td>Green peas, tinned, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Dried peas, WKB (CIS)</td><td>Hommus</td></tr><tr><td>Green beans (pulses)</td><td>White beans in tomato sauce, tinned, HEINZ</td></tr><tr><td>Green/mung beans, dried, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Moong dahl, loose, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Peas (AFR)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Peas (WAS)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Spotted beans</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>White beans, dried, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="20">Red meat</td><td>Beef liver, BNR</td><td>Beef sausage</td></tr><tr><td>Beef without bones</td><td>Bacon, smoked, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, silverside (F2a)</td><td>Beef merguez (spiced)</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, sirloin steak (H1)</td><td>Beef, cubes for stew or curry</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, center brisket</td><td>Beef, fillet, frozen, tenderloin</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, center brisket, with bones (B2)</td><td>Beef, minced</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, fillet, tenderloin</td><td>Burger</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, rump steak</td><td>Canned beef, chunks, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, with bones</td><td>Corned beef, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Beef, without bones, non-specific cut</td><td>Ham, air dried, sold loose</td></tr><tr><td>Buffalo, without bones, non-specific cut</td><td>Ham, from the thigh, cooked and smoked, sold loose</td></tr><tr><td>Goat leg</td><td>Luncheon meat</td></tr><tr><td>Goat, mixed cut, with bones</td><td>Pork ham, pressed, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Lamb liver</td><td>Pork, schnitzel/escalope (A)</td></tr><tr><td>Lamb, chops</td><td>Salami, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Lamb, hindLeg (hindquarters A)</td><td>Salami, sold loose</td></tr><tr><td>Lamb, whole leg</td><td>Sausage</td></tr><tr><td>Live goat</td><td>Sausage, frankfurter/wiener type, artificial skin, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Live sheep</td><td>Sausage, fresh and raw, sold loose</td></tr><tr><td>Mutton tripe</td><td>Sausages, whole/frankfurter</td></tr><tr><td>Mutton chop</td><td>Sliced ham, pork, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Mutton chops</td><td>Veal, schnitzel/escalope (A5)</td></tr><tr><td>Mutton, mixed cut</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Mutton/goat liver, BNR</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Pork liver, BNR</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Pork loin, without bones</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Pork thigh, with bones</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><caption>**Table A5** (continued)</caption><thead><tr><th>Food</th><th>Raw (more work required)</th><th>Transformed (less work required)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>Pork, belly (C)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Pork, collar (B1)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Pork, fillet</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Pork, joint piece for roasting (B2)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Pork, loin chop</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Pork, ribs</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Pork, shoulder</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Pork, with bones, non-specific cut</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Pork, without bones, non-specific cut</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Round steak</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Sirloin steak</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Veal breast, with bones</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Veal chops</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Veal, loin (B2)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Veal, with bones</td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="12">Poultry</td><td>Chicken breast, with skin or bones</td><td>Breakfast sausage, chicken, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken breast, without skin or bones</td><td>Canned chicken</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken legs</td><td>Chicken breast, fillets, shreds or dices</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken wings (ASI)</td><td>Chicken burger</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken wings (WAS)</td><td>Chicken nuggets/dippers, frozen, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken, traditionally bred, live</td><td>Chicken soup</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken, for roasting, free range</td><td>Chicken, non-specific cuts, frozen</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken, live</td><td>Chicken, whole, frozen</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken, non-specific cuts, fresh</td><td>Grilled/roasted chicken</td></tr><tr><td>Chicken, whole, fresh</td><td>Ham, Turkey, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Native house chicken, fresh</td><td>Luncheon chicken</td></tr><tr><td>Turkey</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Turkey breast, fillet</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Whole duck, fresh</td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="7">Fish</td><td>Black pomfret</td><td>Breaded fish fillet (Cod), 2-5 pieces, frozen, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Capitaine</td><td>Breaded fish fillet (Pollock), 2-4 pieces, frozen, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Carp</td><td>Calamari rings, frozen, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Catfish</td><td>Canned sprats in oil, WKB (CIS)</td></tr><tr><td>Cod (gadus morhua)</td><td>Cod (Gadus morhua), frozen, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Fissikh</td><td>Cold-smoked salmon, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Fresh small sardines</td><td>Dried Machoiron, BNR</td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><caption>**Table A5 (continued)**</caption><thead><tr><th>Food</th><th>Raw (more work required)</th><th>Transformed (less work required)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>Giant shrimp</td><td>Dried sardines, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Grouper (Hamour) fish</td><td>Dried shrimp, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Lobster</td><td>Dried small fish, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Mackerel, un-cleaned</td><td>Fish fingers, BL</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Mud crab</td><td>Fish fingers, from fillet, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Mullet</td><td>Fishball, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Prawns/shrimp, medium</td><td>Hake (Merluccius merluccius), Alaska Pollock (Theragra chalcogramma), fillet, frozen, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Prawns/shrimp, small</td><td>Mackerel fillet, tinned, in tomato sauce, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Rainbow-trout (Salmo gairdneri)</td><td>Mackerel fillet, tinned, in vegetable oil, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Red snapper (AFR)</td><td>Mackerel in vegetable oil, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Red snapper</td><td>Pangasius catfish (Pangasius hypophthalmus), fillet, frozen, BL</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Safi</td><td>Salmon in natural juice, WKB (CIS)</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Sea bass</td><td>Salted and semi-dried fish, BL</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Sea crab</td><td>Salty herring (CIS)</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Sea lobster</td><td>Sardines in tomato sauce, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Shrimp, whole, fresh</td><td>Sardines, tinned, with skin, in vegetable oil, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Small fresh fish</td><td>Shrimp, peeled, frozen</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Sole</td><td>Smoked mackerel (Scomber scombrus), fillet, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Spanish mackerel</td><td>Smoked shrimp/prawns, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Squid</td><td>Tinned pink tuna (Skipjack, Thunnus Thynn, Albacares = yellow fin), WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Squid, small</td><td>Tinned sardines, in olive oil, with skin and bones, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Tilapia</td><td>Tinned tuna flakes, in vegetable oil, BL</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Tuna</td><td>Tuna flakes, tinned, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Tuna fish fresh</td><td>Tuna in vegetable oil, exclude tuna steaks, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Tuna steak</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Tuna steaks</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>White pomfret</td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="10">Carbo-hydrates (starchy staples)</td><td>Basmati rice, WKB</td><td>Baguette, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Broken rice, 25%, BNR</td><td>Bread unpacked</td></tr><tr><td>Brown flour</td><td>Bread, mixed</td></tr><tr><td>Brown rice, family pack, BL</td><td>Bread, multicorn</td></tr><tr><td>Brown rice, loose</td><td>Bread, multicorn, industrially packed, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Buckwheat (CIS)</td><td>Bread, white, industrially packed, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Corn</td><td>Bread, white, loaf, BNR</td></tr><tr><td>Corn (maize) flour, loose, BL</td><td>Bread, white, sliced, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Corn (maize) flour, white, WKB</td><td>Bread, white, toast, large pack, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Egyptian rice</td><td>Bread, white, unsliced, WKB</td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><caption>**Table A5 (continued)**</caption><thead><tr><th>Food</th><th>Raw (more work required)</th><th>Transformed (less work required)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>Fresh cassava/manioc/yuca</td><td>Bread, white, large loaf</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Fresh potatoes, brown</td><td>Bread, whole wheat, loaf, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Fresh potatoes, industrially packed</td><td>Burger bread</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Fresh potatoes, white</td><td>Couscous, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Fresh sweet potatoes</td><td>Dried noodles, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Fresh taro</td><td>Egg noodles, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Hard loose bulgur</td><td>Fresh rice noodles, BL</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Jasmine rice, WKB</td><td>Instant noodles, cup, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Long grain rice, family pack, WKB</td><td>Instant noodles, any flavor, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Long-grain rice, not parboiled, BL or WKB</td><td>Lasagna</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Long-grained rice-25-50 KG, BNR</td><td>Lasagna (sheets)</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Long-grain rice, parboiled, WKB</td><td>Lebanese bread</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Maize flour white (Maizena)</td><td>Long-grain rice, parboiled in cooking bags</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Maize flour, yellow</td><td>Roll or bun, prepacked, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Maize grains, white</td><td>Roll, BNR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Maize, BL</td><td>Roll, multicorn</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Medium-grain rice, BNR</td><td>Round bread</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Millet (CIS)</td><td>Samoon bread</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Millet, sorghum, BL</td><td>Short pasta, BL</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Oats, Quaker</td><td>Short pasta, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Oats, rolled, WKB</td><td>Sliced brown bread (AFR)</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Plantains, fresh green</td><td>Sliced brown bread (WAS)</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Plantains, fresh ripe</td><td>Spaghetti, BARILLA</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Premium rice #1, prepacked, BL</td><td>Spaghetti, BL</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Premium rice #2, prepacked, BL</td><td>Spaghetti, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Premium rice #3, BNR</td><td>Sweet bread</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Premium rice #4, BNR</td><td>Uncle Ben's rice</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Rice flour, Atta, WKB</td><td>Vermicelli, BL</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Risotto rice, WKB</td><td>Wheat tortillas, WKB</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Round-grain rice, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Short-grain rice, BNR</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Sticky rice, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Sun white Rice - Australia</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Wheat</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Wheat flour, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Wheat flour, loose, BNR</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Wheat flour, not self-rising, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Wheat semolina (suji), WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>White rice #1, #3 or #5, BNR</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><caption>**Table A5 (continued)**</caption><thead><tr><th>Food</th><th>Raw (more work required)</th><th>Transformed (less work required)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="6">Oils</td><td>White rice #10, prepacked, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>White rice #7, prepacked, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>White rice #8, prepacked, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>White rice #9, prepacked, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Wholemeal flour, Atta, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Coconut oil, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="16">Onions</td><td>Corn oil</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Corn oil, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Cottonseed oil (CIS)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Olive oil, extra virgin, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Olive oil, extra virgin, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Olive oil, standard, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Palm oil unrefined, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Palm oil, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Peanut oil, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Soybean oil, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Sunflower oil, BL</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Sunflower oil, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Tahina</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Vegetable oil, WKB</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Fresh leek</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Fresh onions</td><td></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="5">Tomatoes</td><td>Fresh tomato cluster</td><td>Chopped tomatoes, BL</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Fresh tomatoes, round</td><td>Chopped tomatoes, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Tomato paste (large), WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Tomato paste, WKB</td></tr><tr><td>Tomato puree (Passata di Pomodoro), WKB</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

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