General Statement

IFAMR actively collaborates with academic communities to provide a joint platform for scholars and practitioners worldwide to address pressing challenges in the global agrifood system. In this context, the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review (IFAMR) will publish a Special Issue entitled “True Pricing in Agriculture: Internalizing Externalities in Agrifood Value Chains and Decision-Making.”

Global agrifood systems generate substantial benefits for society, yet simultaneously impose significant environmental, social, health, and socio-economic costs that remain largely invisible in conventional pricing mechanisms (IPCC, 2022; FAO, 2023; FAO, 2024). These hidden costs, or externalities, are increasingly recognized as a major barrier to sustainable, resilient, equitable food systems, and acceptance in society of the current food system (e.g. Romeo, 2022). Recent estimates suggest that the quantified hidden costs of the global agrifood system exceed USD 12 trillion annually; approximately 10% of global GDP (FAO, 2023). At the same time, positive outcomes, such as the prevention or reduction of externalities through more sustainable production practices, are insufficiently rewarded in current market structures (UNFSS, 2021).

The urgency of transforming agrifood systems to address these externalities is widely acknowledged (OECD, 2021; Rockström et al., 2025). Regulatory developments, such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), have strengthened transparency and accountability regarding environmental and social impacts (European Commission, 2023). However, these regulations primarily apply to large firms, leaving many actors in agrifood value chains (particularly farms and SMEs) outside mandatory compliance. As a result, transparency alone may be insufficient to drive coordinated sustainability transitions across value chains (RSM, 2024).

In parallel, True Cost Accounting (TCA) has gained momentum as a methodology to quantify and value environmental, social, health, and economic externalities in agrifood systems (de Adelhart Toorop et al., 2021; UNEP, 2021). Building on TCA, True Pricing (TP) refers to the integration of these externalities into pricing mechanisms or decision frameworks to support more informed decision-making by farmers, agribusiness firms, policymakers, investors, and consumers. Empirical studies demonstrate substantial variation in external costs across food categories, particularly between animal- and plant-based products (Pieper et al., 2020; Michalke et al., 2022), and practical applications of true pricing are increasingly visible (Albert Heijn & True Price, 2023; Universität Greifswald et al., 2023; De Aanzet, 2025; True Price, 2025). While the topic has gained practical relevance, rigorous academic studies are still limited.

Existing studies predominantly focus on methodological refinement or consumer-facing communication strategies (de Adelhart Toorop et al., 2021; Wilken et al., 2024; Lucas et al., 2025; Peschel et al., 2026), while the role of True Pricing as a strategic decision-making, governance, and coordination tool in agrifood value chains remains underexplored (Steffen et al., 2022; Klapper & Lusardi, 2020). Consequently, the potential contribution of True Pricing to food system resilience and coordinated sustainability transitions is not yet well understood from an agribusiness management perspective.

This Special Issue seeks to address this gap by advancing interdisciplinary research on True Pricing in agriculture, explicitly aligning with IFAMR’s mission to connect rigorous scholarship with managerial and policy relevance.

Areas of Focus

This Special Issue welcomes contributions that advance understanding of True Pricing as a decision-making and governance mechanism in agriculture and agrifood value chains. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to:

Submission Instructions 

Step 1 – Manuscript submission

Authors are invited to submit full manuscripts through the IFAMR Editorial Manager system no later than October 31, 2026. During submission, authors should select “True Pricing in Agriculture: Internalizing Externalities in Agrifood Value Chains and Decision-Making” as the Article Type to ensure that the manuscript is considered for this Special Issue.

All submissions must comply with the IFAMR author guidelines and will be subject to the journal’s standard double-blind peer review process.

Step 2 – Review process and publication

Manuscripts will be reviewed independently following IFAMR’s editorial standards. Authors will be notified of first-round decisions according to the Special Issue timeline. Accepted papers will be published online first (“in press”) as soon as they are ready, and will subsequently be assembled into the Special Issue, which is expected to be published in Q3 2027.

The format of complete manuscripts should follow IFAMR’s author guidelines that can be found at: https://www.ifama.org/submission-guidelines/ 

Final manuscripts should be uploaded using IFAMR’s online submission portal: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ifamr/default.aspx.

Special Issue Timeline

October 31, 2026: Submission deadline of full papers 

January 15, 2027: Authors informed of conference acceptance and invited for presentations

Mid 2027: Notice to authors of the final decision

The special issue is expected to be published in Q3 2027.

Please direct questions to Guest Editors: 

Linda Snippe, linda.snippe@inholland.nl
Woody Maijers, woody.maijers@inholland.nl
Loïc Sauvée, loic.sauvee@unilasalle.fr
Sjoukje Goldman, s.p.k.goldman@hva.nl
Pieter Jansen, e.p.jansen@rug.nl

References

Albert Heijn & True Price. (2023). True Price experiment at Albert Heijn To Go [PDF]. Retrieved January 12, 2026, from https://static.ah.nl/binaries/ah/content/assets/ah-nl/core/about/duurzaamheid/paper-true-price-experiment-albert-heijn-to-go-june-4th.pdf 

De Aanzet. (2025). Basic – Media: De Aanzet biologische supermarkt [Webpagina]. Retrieved January 12, 2026, from https://www.de-aanzet.nl/basic-01 

de Adelhart Toorop, R., Yates, J., Watkins, M., Bernard, J., & de Groot Ruiz, A. (2021). Methodologies for true cost accounting in the food sector. Nature Food, 2(9), 655-663. 

European Commission. (2023). Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). European Commission — Capital Markets Union & Financial Markets.
Retrieved January 12, 2026, from https://finance.ec.europa.eu/capital-markets-union-and-financial-markets/company-reporting-and-auditing/company-reporting/corporate-sustainability-reporting_en 

FAO. (2023). The State of Food and Agriculture 2023: Revealing the true cost of food to transform agrifood systems. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

FAO. (2024). The State of Food and Agriculture 2024. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

IPCC. (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press.

Klapper, L., & Lusardi, A. (2020). Financial literacy and financial resilience: Evidence from around the world. Financial Management, 49(3), 589-614.

Lucas, B. F., Abbas, F., Dassesse, K., Marti, J., & Brunner, T. A. (2025). Uncovering the determinants of attitudes towards true cost accounting for food: a study with Swiss residents. Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, 102192.

Michalke, A., Stein, L., Fichtner, R., Gaugler, T., & Stoll-Kleemann, S. (2022). True cost accounting in agri-food networks. Sustainability Science, 17, 2269–2285.

OECD (2021). Making better policies for food systems. OECD Publishing.
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/making-better-policies-for-food-systems_ddfba4de-en.html 

Peschel, A. O., Bliemer, M. C. J., & Thøgersen, J. (2026). True pricing – guiding consumers within a new pricing paradigm. Marketing Letters, 37, 1.

Pieper, M., Michalke, A., & Gaugler, T. (2020). Calculation of external climate costs for food highlights inadequate pricing of animal products. Nature Communications, 11, 6117.

Rockström, J., Donges, J. F., Fetzer, I., Martin, M. A., Wang-Erlandsson, L., & Richardson, K. (2024). Planetary Boundaries guide humanity’s future on Earth. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 5(11), 773-788.

Romeo, N. (2022, April 2). How much do things really cost? The New Yorker. Retrieved January 12, 2026, from
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-much-do-things-really-cost 

RSM Netherlands. (2024). CSRD and CSDDD: connecting the dots. RSM. Retrieved January 12, 2026, from
https://www.rsm.global/netherlands/en/insights/csrd-and-csddd-connecting-dots 

Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., ... & Sörlin, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. science, 347(6223), 1259855.

True Price. (2025). Vermaat canteens pilot. Retrieved January 12, 2026, from https://www.trueprice.org/vermaat-canteens-pilot/ 

United Nations Environment Programme. (2021). Measuring what matters in agriculture and food systems: A roadmap for true cost accounting. UNEP.

United Nations. (2021). United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021: Action tracks and outcomes. United Nations.

Universität Greifswald, Technische Hochschule Nürnberg, Gaugler, T., & Michalke, A. (2023). Wahre Kosten.
https://cdn.penny.de/dam/jcr:1e1291b7-cc0c-4d9d-92ae-e9a8c2e8fb61/Wahre_Kosten_FAQs.pdf

Wilken, R., Schmidt, J., Dost, F., & Bürgin, D. (2024). Does the presentation of true costs at the point of purchase nudge consumers toward sustainable product options? Marketing Letters, 35(4), 589-602.