True cost accounting applications for agrifood systems policymakers

This paper by the True Price Foundation and the Impact Economy Foundation has been written as a background paper to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)’s flagship report “The State of Food and Agriculture 2023”. In it introduces true cost accounting (TCA) as an approach to measure and value the costs and benefits generated by agrifood systems in order to facilitate improved decision-making. The paper is based on a systematic review of existing TCA approaches and of relevant case studies in agrifood systems. Guidance on conducting TCA is provided, especially in relation to data collection. The paper ends with a discussion on scaling and harmonizing TCA for agrifood systems transformation.