The 20th
anniversary
edition
March 14 & 15, 2025
at UNESCO • Paris

You are a co-author of the report « L’injuste prix de notre alimentation, quels coûts pour la société et la planète ? » (The Unfair Price of Our Food: What Costs for Society and the Planet). Could you tell us what the objectives of the report are, and what you aimed to demonstrate through it?

Marie DRIQUE: The current public debate tends to separate issues like food insecurity, the remuneration of agricultural production, and the sustainability of our production models, even though they are inevitably linked. This is something we've been observing at Secours Catholique for years. Food insecurity is not just about a lack of access to enough food, but also to food of adequate quality, with significant consequences for health (including mental health). Today, we’re seeing the deadlock of a system that produces food at the lowest possible cost, which also affects the producers we work with, who are often struggling. From an environmental standpoint, as an international organization, we are also on the front lines, witnessing the challenges agriculture faces due to ongoing climate upheavals.

However, the current debate tends to pit food insecurity against the remuneration of agricultural production, when these issues are closely interconnected. For a few years now, we've started collaborating with various actors who address these different challenges, to stop treating them separately and to come together to offer joint solutions.

By calculating the "true" cost of food, we show that by continuing to segment these topics, we remain in a reactive mode, which ends up being very costly! This calculation takes into account the real negative impacts of our food system on health, the environment, and the socio-economic situation of part of the agricultural world and the food chain.

Our primary objective was therefore to break free from the opposition of these different issues, but also to highlight the financial implications of changing our modes of production and consumption. Investments are not being made in the right places! We need to reconsider the post-war social contract that promoted large-scale, low-cost production.

In our methodology, we were inspired by the "doughnut theory," which visualizes both the environmental ceiling and the social foundation to create a "safe and just space for humanity." This allowed us to identify the indicators to measure. We then quantified the expenses based on the amounts put forward by public policies for each of these issues. The result: every year, we spend 19 billion euros to compensate for and repair the negative effects of our food system.

The report particularly criticizes a system that structurally prevents access to healthy, sustainable food and ensures fair remuneration for producers. How does this "supply structure" function, and how does it create food inequalities?

Our finding in this report is that we need to move beyond the classic narrative that suggests change depends solely on the will of consumers and producers, who should make more informed choices. Take food insecurity, for example: the groups of people involved in the study shared the difficulty of responding to recommendations like "eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day" or "pay producers better" because they don’t have the means. As Alain said, "When you’re on welfare, you don’t choose what you eat." These recommendations create frustration and feed into the democratic crisis, as they make people feel excluded from societal issues.

The same happens in the agricultural sector. When a farmer wants to change their practices, they face a public aid system that pushes them toward a certain model of production rather than another. Meanwhile, actors in the transformation and distribution sectors do not offer avenues for change.

Therefore, this change in our food system must also happen within the food chain and with the factors that influence our eating behaviors: what we find in stores, the types of stores around us, the prices that producers receive from intermediaries. For this, we need public policies, not just voluntary commitments from private actors.

Our production system, inherited from the post-war period, encourages mass production at low prices. This generally pushes us today toward an intensive production model that has a negative impact on both our environment and health, notably through the massive use of pesticides. People in precarious situations are helped through a food aid system that creates a two-tier food system, with significant societal impacts: poor self-esteem, shame, and more.

You mention in the report that the 49 billion euros in public aid given to actors in the food system in 2021 are poorly directed and reinforce the current failing system. How do you explain this?

Indeed, the goal is to shift the direction of these public expenditures because they do not address ecological and social transition objectives.

This is evident with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): the larger you are, the more aid you receive. However, the novelty of our report is that it shows there is room for maneuver in France. The French state covers nearly 60% of these 49 billion euros, notably through social and tax contribution exemptions that have no ecological or social conditions attached.

In the end, these expenditures maintain a model based on volume maximization and cost reduction, with direct consequences on wages throughout the production chain, as well as on product quality.

The report suggests that these public subsidies could be rethought to redirect the food system and make it more just and sustainable. You presented your report on October 16th at the National Assembly: what was the reaction of the deputies, and what are your expectations of the political world?

This meeting took place during the tense context of budgetary discussions, but we were able to have honest discussions about shared observations and the solutions mentioned in the report. The objective was, of course, to share these observations but also to discuss the room for maneuver we have, as some costs could be avoided (almost 19 billion euros annually). Our expectation is for concrete measures around advertising, price transparency, and margin regulation, for example. We also hope for a framework law on the right to food, to provide a new direction for these public expenditures, as I mentioned earlier.

Food is a collective issue that concerns us all and should unite us. It is now time to build cross-party alliances and open a discussion, which remains challenging in an increasingly polarized political context. In this democratic crisis, it’s also a topic that can reconnect politics with the daily lives of the French: everyone can understand the link between collective decision-making and daily life—where does my food come from, who is paid for their work, and what’s my connection to others when I share a meal?

One of your proposals, which may seem surprising, is to ban advertising for certain products before 9 PM on TV and the internet, as has been done in the UK. Are there other proposals you would consider "easy to implement"?

There are many levers that influence eating behavior: advertising, for example, but also the availability of food in our neighborhoods, and even how we move around. All these factors that influence food and purchasing behaviors can be regulated, incentivized, or addressed through territorial planning and support for stakeholders (for instance, supporting specific businesses to open in certain areas, providing assistance for sustainable meals in school cafeterias, etc.). These actions are in the hands of both national and local governments.

You mentioned being surprised by the proposal regarding advertising, but what's clear in this report is that we need to move away from individual-level demands for change. A portion of these recommendations only worsen the feeling of exclusion for people facing poverty who cannot always meet them. Furthermore, as long as advertising promotes unhealthy, overly sugary, salty, or fatty foods, it creates contradictory messages: while public policies encourage better eating, advertising does the opposite. Our report shows that private sector actors spend 5.5 billion euros on advertising, and more than half of this is for unhealthy products. 5.5 billion euros is more than 1,000 times the budget for the National Nutrition Health Program! While financial resources for communication can never be equal, we can certainly limit these ads and reduce their exposure, especially to children. Society is demanding these solutions, and doctors are sounding the alarm. We need to win the battle against industrial interests.

Beyond collective action, what individual actions can we take to help change the agro-food system?

Individual mobilization is crucial for driving change locally and nationally, and this report has always been intended to feed into the debate. Our campaign includes local events, as our structures are deeply embedded in communities. These events help bring the report’s findings into public debate through popular education methods. We've designed activities that allow participants to engage with the report’s conclusions and think about what’s feasible in their communities or neighborhoods, with a concrete impact on individual practices.

We felt it was important to move beyond individual action and messages like "consume better" by placing the individual within a collective framework. This allows us to show that mobilization is possible and necessary, not just as a consumer but also as a citizen.

In your report, you talk about the "cost" of our food. The 20th edition of the "Université de la Terre" we are preparing has the central theme "Nature = Future." What is the current cost of our food to biodiversity and ecosystems?

We know that our agricultural model is partly responsible for biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and excessive water consumption. However, it is also a place of essential change, which is good news for environmental issues, provided we tackle it correctly.

In our report, we estimate the social and environmental costs, which help quantify the "societal costs" of our food. It’s clear that environmental costs, estimated at 3.4 billion euros per year, are likely underestimated due to the methodology used.

This underestimation is due to a pragmatic and ethical choice. From a pragmatic perspective, the costs quantified in the report reflect actual public spending, representing public money and thus society's burden (but not the full scope of the problem). From an ethical standpoint, we believe that some impacts are immeasurable, and we chose not to monetize biodiversity loss, as that would imply that such extinctions could be compensated by money. These amounts don’t tell us what it would take to address the problem fully, but rather indicate what is spent to "repair" the impacts of our agricultural and food system. Given current trends, these expenditures will likely continue to increase.

Photo Credits: Christophe FOURNIER