At the beginning of the year, Nature & More, Eosta's trademark for organic fruit and vegetables, launched a Europe-wide campaign called "The true cost of our food". Products such as pears, oranges, lemons, and grapes were supplied with easy-to-read flyers about the hidden costs of food production. But the information didn’t always reach the supermarkets and the customers.
However, pineapples are ideal ambassador fruits to deliver the message of hidden costs. It is easy to attach a little information card to the crown of the pineapple. The pineapples of Nature & More, with the informative label on hidden costs, are sold in health food stores and in supermarkets in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, France, Denmark, Finland, and other countries.
For example, the label on the Costa Rican pineapples, grown by Andres, inform us that it saves €2,013 of climate costs and €805 on water compared to conventional pineapples, not per pineapple of course but per hectare per year. And this is just because he doesn’t use pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
The sustainable cultivation method increases the fertility of the soil; it stores more CO2 in the ground, purifies the groundwater and protects the natural biodiversity. The cheaper, conventionally cultivated, pineapples have additional costs, which are paid for by the taxpayer; i.e. by the same consumer who eats the pineapple. For examples groundwater must be purified in water purification plants, which are paid for by the government. So, a "cheap" pineapple may turn out to be a bad bargain, and organic pineapples are worth every penny!
Nature & More has created an animation that explains "The True Cost of Food" in a nutshell. In less than two minutes the animation shows how important it is to include all costs of food production, including hidden social and ecological costs.