Our food systems are broken. The good news is that we know what to do about it, and we have for a long time. The Limits of Growth, published in 1972 by the Club of Rome, described the Green Revolution as a technological solution to the world’s food problems, overlooking its social and environmental consequences. Mirroring the gross domestic product (GDP), which was described by Robert F. Kennedy as an indicator that ‘measures everything except that which is worthwhile‘, food systems have been driven by a lust for productivity, measured in yield per hectare, lacking indicators that could consider socio-cultural and environmental aspects integral to providing healthy nutrition for all. Today, negative aspects of food systems contributing to GDP growth include the productivist expansion of cultivated lands without regard for the ecosystem destruction they incur, the lobbying of the agro-industries maintaining structural power imbalances and the health-care costs of immuno-deficiencies afflicting people around the world. At the same time, we are failing to account for both the negative and positive impacts of our food systems. The State of Food and Agriculture 2023 unveils some of what was left unaccounted for, estimating the hidden costs of food systems to reach at least $10 trillion a year, representing about 10% of the global GDP.  

Against this background, the need for new economic indicators is blatantly clear, as is the need to re-think our food systems beyond the sole pursuit of economic growth.