A recent study shows that the French government spends €19 billion every year to counter the negative impact of food on health and the environment. Taking all proportions into account, that amount will also be particularly high in Belgium.
How can people continue to eat healthily if food is the first thing families struggling to make ends meet, save on? How can farmers continue to produce food in an ecological way while earning a decent income? To reconcile these apparently contradictory objectives, a number of French organisations working around health, solidarity and the defence of farmers' interests have realised a major study around the real cost of food in France. A few weeks ago, they presented the results of this. And they are also particularly instructive for our country.
The fact that both in France and Belgium more and more people have to turn to the food banks, that diabetes and obesity are on the rise and that more and more farmers are giving up because, despite their hard work, they are struggling to make ends meet, are all signs that the food system is going very wrong. To find solutions, a coordinated approach that takes the various needs into account is therefore more than appropriate. And there is a need for awareness that cooperation is needed above all to address these signals. The French study relied on figures from I4CE (Institute for Climate Economics) and a scientific approach to hidden costs, among other things. In November 2023, the United Nations Agency for Agriculture and Nutrition estimated these hidden costs at 10% of GDP worldwide. They include costs of caring for patients with diabetes and lost productivity due to environmental pollution and floods. At the same time, the organisations that conducted the study looked not only at theoretical costs of all that but also at real French public spending. The costs resulting from biodiversity loss, on the other hand, were not taken into account.
On this basis, the study concludes that by 2023, the French government will have had to spend 19 billion euros on, among other things, the treatment of diseases directly related to unhealthy food, occupational diseases among farmers, compensation measures for farmers' underpayments, and so on. The amount is broken down as follows: €12 billion in healthcare, €3.4 billion for ecological impact and the balance for socio-economic impact. The researchers point out that the amount for ecological impact in particular is lower than the real damage caused by the current dominant agro-economic system.
According to the researchers, the French government could save a lot of that €19 billion by no longer opting for a policy of compensation and reparation, but by fully adopting a preventive approach. They also complain that the French government spends almost 50 billion euros on granting all kinds of subsidies to the agri-food sector. But most of that money ends up in the hands of actors who fully benefit from the current system that focuses mainly on high-volume production. In other words, the support to the sector is a good thing, but the money should be distributed differently and better. In any case, the debate on the hidden costs of our food system is a subject that should also urgently be put on the table in Belgium, all the more so because recently in Europe there has again been some reticence around the nevertheless hopeful ‘Green Deal’. A different view of our food system with more focus on the short chain could benefit both farmers and consumer health.
Geert Degrande - https://www.re-story.be/