Nils Kohlschütter’s scientific contributions

Being by far the biggest user of land area in Germany, agriculture can be held responsible for a great amount of damage to the environment on all the three pillars of sustainability – economic, social and environmental. The resulting but hidden costs of these mostly insufficiently quantified consequences are not included in the market prices of food yet. Therefore, this study quantitatively identifies and aggregates three different environmental impacts (nitrogen, greenhouse gases, energy generation) from various food groups to then calculate external costs for different food categories. Internalizing follow-up costs in a category-specific way and therefore following the polluter-pays principle (UN 1992) paves the way towards a more sustainable price-design of agricultural output. Using life cycle analysis and meta-analysis shows that mark-up and external costs are the highest for conventional-animal-based (192% mark-up on producer price level), the second highest for conventional milk porducts (94%) and the lowest for organic-plant-based (6%) products. In all examined categories, organic products cause less additional costs than their conventional counterparts. Our approach attempts to close the gap between the market price and actual costs, whereby the true value of different food-groups and agricultural systems is finally represented.