Organic fruit specialist Eosta, Triodos Bank and EY (Ernst & Young) are to reveal the results of a pilot programme that demonstrates how organic fruit production has a positive economic impact, for not just agriculture and the environment, but for consumer health.
The results of the True Cost Accounting pilot programme have found significant hidden benefits to consumer and producer health of buying organic fruits, including apples, pineapples, tomatoes, pears, citrus and bananas, due to the negative impact of pesticide residues.
According to the programme, in the case of organic apples, the benefit to consumer health has been calculated at €0.14¢ per kilo compared with conventional apples. For pineapples, the positive deficit has been estimated at €0.6¢ per kilo.
Adding in previous True Cost calculations for the hidden cost impact on soil, climate and water of organic versus conventional, the data shows that organic apples have a positive financial advantage of €0.20¢ per kilo compared with production that uses agrochemicals.
Eosta – together with Triodos Bank, EY and other partners – will announce the preliminary findings of the initiative at the Biofach 2017 organic food show in Nuremberg, Germany on February 16, and will for the first time include True Cost Accounting data on health.
Eosta CEO Volkert Engelsman said: “Thanks to the fantastic work of UN departments such as FAO, but also WHO, UNEP and UNDP, we have access to monetisation templates that help not only define the impact of food production on soil fertility, climate change, water quality, biodiversity and livelihoods, but also monetise the impact."
“We’ve done that work on a farming and food level, and we will now move ahead and apply it to our balance sheets and profit & loss accounts, meaning as well as reporting to financial stakeholders, we will also report to natural and social capital stakeholders.
“As a small to medium-sized enterprise, we can move fast, but what we want to avoid is that this initiative dies in splendid isolation – we want it to be scaled up, which is why we have embedded it in the context of the Natural Capital Coalition’s Natural Capital Protocol."
“We hope to combine the changed leadership power of small to medium-sized enterprises and banks, like Eosta and Triodos, with those players who have the ability to scale up the initiative once the first results have been delivered.”
