Going true priced bananas at NFP’s World Food Day Event

What can YOU do to reduce environmental & social costs?

50 professionals from the (Dutch) diamond - private sector, civil society, government and knowledge institutes - joined the True Price Parallel Session, which kick-started with a brief introduction to the concept of true pricing by Claire van den Broek, Director of True Price Foundation. The participants were challenged to think about the hidden environmental and social costs in the banana and tea value chains through a quiz. Subsequently the participants brainstormed in groups about what they can do themselves to reduce environmental and social externalities: from both a consumer perspective and from their organisations perspective.

What can the actors of the (Dutch) Diamond do?

True Priced Banana’s - The power of true pricing in practice

Central in the True Price parallel session stood the work of FairMatch Support, Udea BV and Odin foodcoop. In collaboration with True Price Foundation, these 3 partners, guided by true price transparency, are engaging all value chain players from the banana value chains in the Dominican Republic and Peru to jointly reduce the hidden environmental and social costs without raising the consumer price. Phase 1 is supported by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). Stay tuned as we will further inspire you how true price transparency can in practice be used to lower the hidden costs of food.

Moderated by Suzanne van Tilburg (Rabobank), a panel consisting of Steven IJzerman (UDEA), Wouter Wezenbeek (Odin), Herman uit de Bosch (FairMatch Support) and Maurits Appeldoorn (True Price Foundation) discussed the roles different stakeholders within and around the value chain, and how they can work together to transition towards a more just and sustainable food system.

The role of Private Sector

The panelists emphasized that true price transparency is needed to kick-start and drive the discussion within the value chain on what remediation strategies for environmental and social externalities are necessary. Through joint effort within the value chain innovative solutions for remediation which offer a win-win for people, planet and profit can be found, developed and implemented. An example of a remediation strategy in the banana case is the offering of long term off-take contracts to farmers, instead of the current 3-month contracts. These long-term contracts offer farmers much more security and therewith access to finance and therewith opportunity to invest in drip irrigation instead of field flooding, countering the current major externality in banana growing; water use.

The role of governments

The panel also highlighted the important role of the Dutch government in kick-starting true pricing initiatives by the private sector. In the banana case it is the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) who funded the true price calculation and the assistance of FairMatch Support to the off-takers Odin and UDEA. It enables value chain actors to make lasting improvements within the value chain, lowering hidden costs for the long term.

Next to subsidizing the kick start of true price transparency for value chain actors, the government could drive even more significant change if it would repurposing currently adverse subsidies towards initiatives which remediate social, environmental and health externalities.

Lego game

Each product we produce, buy, and consume comes with a cost to our environment and our society. But how are the true prices calculated? During the True Price Lego Game, participants learned how to calculate true prices themselves in a playful manner. Through a quiz the true cost of coffee was calculated by the participants for the externalities ‘land use’, ‘water use’ and ‘deforestation’ were calculated and visually built up with lego blocks. A sneak peak in how it is done. Interested in doing a true price lego session within your organisation or school. Please do not hesitate to contact the True Price Foundation.

Lunch

Last but not least, The actual true price of two of the sandwiches served during NFPs World Food Day lunch, have been calculated by the True Price Foundation; a hummus vegan sandwich and an egg salad vegetarian sandwich. The True Price of a ham salad meat sandwich has been calculated as well, but this sandwich was not served. Why? Just take a look at the graph below.

Want to dive into the details of true price differences between a vegan, vegetarian and meat sandwich? And you lost your napkin with the QR-code yesterday? No worries use this link to access the website with all the details: https://trueprice.org/wfd2024/

By showing the hidden costs of these sandwiches, we hope everyone takes a moment to discover which of their daily food choices come with the highest hidden costs—and explore the social and environmental impacts behind every bite.

We look back on an eventful day, full of enthusiastic people wishing to know more about and even start implementing true pricing. This is all the better, as change towards more healthy, just, and sustainable food systems is a lot more achievable if we have everyone on board. Become a member of the Global Partnership and learn about true pricing, new developments in the field and shared best practices!