Economics

Overview

Today’s food system destroys value at massive scale. Best-available estimates put its hidden health and environmental costs at well over $10 trillion per year, with recent UN/FAO work attributing the majority to diet-related disease and additional losses to environmental damage. Transforming the system yields large net benefits.
foodsystemeconomics.org

Prices, incentives, and what we really pay

Headline prices don’t tell the whole story: public supports, externalities, and market structures shape what gets produced and what consumers see at checkout. This section curates evidence on affordability and price trends, elasticities, producer supports and subsidies, trade and market concentration, and the true-cost accounting that links food choices to health care spending, productivity, and environmental damages.
foodsystemeconomics.org

What the numbers say about dietary shifts

Multiple analyses find that in middle- and high-income countries, healthier and lower-impact eating patterns can reduce household food costs – and become even more affordable when waste falls and wider social costs are counted.

Investment and ROI

On the capital side, independent assessments indicate that alternative-protein innovation delivers the highest emissions reduction per dollar invested among major decarbonization options – an estimated ~4.4 Gt CO₂e saved per $1T invested, with strong “impact on capital employed” compared with power, transport, and industry levers.

What you’ll find here:

• Affordability & Consumption: Household food spending, demand elasticities, and how diet shifts affect costs.
• Externalities & Risk: Hidden health and environmental costs, climate and economic vulnerabilities.
• Markets & Trade: Global flows, exposure to shocks, and concentration in agri-food supply chains.
• Subsidies & Price Signals: How financial supports and market structures shape affordability and distort true costs.
• Procurement & Innovation: Institutional buying power and investment in new foods and technologies.
• Overviews: Economy-wide appraisals of the costs and benefits of food system transformation.