The High Cost of Cheap Food

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The High Cost of Cheap Food

_http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/articles/the-high-cost-of-cheap-food_

(http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/articles/the-high-cost-of-cheap-food)

by _John Ikerd_

(http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/articles/author/jikerd/) Tags: _native

nutrition_

(http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/tag/native-nutrition/)

 

At a recent organic farming conference in Winnipeg, Canada, a woman in the

audience stood up and said: “Organic foods are not going to become popular

with

mainstream consumers until they became quick, convenient, and cheap.†My

immediate response was that true organic foods were not going to be quick,

convenient, or cheap — at least not for some time to come. Fortunately, more

and

more people are finding organic foods to be worth the time, effort, and

money. The comment, however, has caused me to think further about the nature of

our food system and about what we have done to try to make foods quick,

convenient, and cheap for consumers.

First, at the farm level, our never-ending quest for cheap food is the root

cause of the transformation of Agriculture from a system of small,

diversified, independently operated, family farms into a system of large-scale,

industrialized, corporately controlled agribusinesses. The production

technologies

that supported specialization, mechanization, and ultimately, large-scale,

contract production, were all developed to make agriculture more efficient –

to

make food cheaper for consumers. Millions of American farmers have been

forced off the land, those remaining are sacrificing their independence, and

thousands of small farming communities have withered and died – all for the

sake

of cheap food.

These were the consequences of progress, so we were told. The agricultural

establishment has boasted loudly that ever fewer farmers have been able to feed

a growing nation with an ever-decreasing share of consumer income spent for

food. The increases in economic efficiency have been impressive, but what

about the human costs. Economists have totaled up tremendous savings for

consumers from lower food costs, but they have never bothered to place a value

on

the lives of farm families that have been destroyed by the loss of their farms,

their way of life, and their heritage. They have never bothered to consider

the value of the lives of rural people – with roots in rural schools,

churches, and businesses – who were forced to abandon their communities as

farm

families were forced off the land. The human costs of cheap food have been

undeniably tremendous, but since they couldn’t be measured in dollars and

cents,

they have gone uncounted.

The ecological costs of cheap food, likewise not measurable in dollars and

cents, also have gone uncounted, and thus, largely ignored. Today, only the

most diehard industrialists bother to deny that we have degraded the

productivity of the land through erosion and contamination, and that we have

polluted

the natural environment with agricultural chemicals – in our never-ending

pursuit of cheaper food. Certainly, we had soil erosion in the “dust bowlâ€

days,

but we were making great strides in soil conservation, before the dawning of

industrial agriculture in the late 1940s. In spite of stepped up soil

conservation efforts of the 1990s, American farms still are losing topsoil at

rates

far exceeding rates of soil regeneration. Feeble efforts to control soil loss

through reduced tillage leave farmers increasingly reliant on herbicides

that pollute our streams and groundwater and that disrupt or destroy the

biological life in the soil.

All life on earth is rooted in the soil. As farmers destroy the natural

productivity of the land, they are destroying the ability of the earth to

support

life. We are destroying the future of humanity to make agriculture more “

efficient.†What is the value of the future of humanity? Are we in fact

willing

to risk the future of human life on earth just so we can have cheap food?

With increasing corporate control of agriculture we may be approaching an end

of agriculture in America – at least agriculture as we know it. The

globalization of agriculture, through “free-trade†agreements, means that

food in

the future will be grown wherever in the world it can be produced at the

lowest economic cost. High costs of land and labor in the US – consequences of

favorable employment opportunities and the urban-to-rural population migration

—

may keep production costs in the US well above costs in other food producing

regions of the world. The multinational food corporations that increasingly

control agriculture are not people – they have no heart, no soul, nor

citizenship in any particular country. They will produce or buy agricultural

commodities wherever they can produce or buy at the lowest cost, without regard

for

national origin. Our continuing quest for cheap food could mean the end of

American agriculture.

The US in the future could well become as dependent on the rest of the world

for food as we are today for oil. Economists argue that it doesn’t matter

where our food is produced. If producing food elsewhere in the world will be

cheaper, we will all be better off without agriculture in the US. But how long

will it be before an OFEC (Organization of Food Exporting Countries) is formed

to restrict world food supplies causing our food prices to skyrocket – just

as we have seen skyrocketing prices of gasoline. Perhaps we can keep food

imports flowing — through our military might, if economic coercion fails.

But,

what will be the real costs? How many small wars will we have to fight, and

how many people will we be “forced to kill†– just for the sake of cheap

food?

Can we afford the real costs of cheap food?

The costs of making food quick and convenient probably are no less that the

cost of making food cheap. Nearly eighty cents of each dollar Americans spend

for food goes to pay for marketing services – processing, packaging,

transportation, storage, advertising, etc. All of these costs are associated

with

making our food convenient – getting it into the most convenient form and

package, getting it to the most convenient location, at the most convenient

time,

and convincing us to buy it. So, we pay far more for the convenience of our

food than we pay for the food itself. In fact, we pay more to those who “

package and advertise†our food than we pay to the farmers who produce it. So

by

far the greatest part of the total cost of food is the cost of convenience.

Our addiction to convenience also is placing control of our food supply in

the hands of a few giant, multinational corporations. As Dr. Bill Heffernan of

the University of Missouri has pointed out previously in _Small Farm Today_

(http://www.smallfarmtoday.com/) , the global food supply today is dominated

by a handful of giant agribusiness firms, allied by various means, forming

three “global food clusters.†These firms influence and, in many cases,

control

nearly everything that happens to our food because they control the

processes that make our food “convenient.†The price of convenient food is

not just

the eighty cents of each dollar we spend for food. The greatest cost of

convenient food has been the loss of control of our food supply.

The costs of quick food are similar in nature to the costs of convenience

food. Our growing addiction of “fast food†is evident in the ever

increasing

share of our food dollar spent at restaurants and other eating establishments

–

a share approaching half of total food purchases. And, “fast foodsâ€

places, such as McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut,

account for nearly half of all food consumed away from home. Erick Schlosser,

in

his best seller, “Fast Food Nation,†addresses the cost of our “love

affairâ€

with fast foods. He states that “fast food has triggered the homogenization

of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widening

of the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and

propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad.†He

documents how

quick food has lured us into choosing diets deficient in nearly everything

except calories, supporting practices deceptive in every aspect from

advertising to flavoring, and systems that degrade nearly everyone and

everything

involved in the process.

The fast food industry has lured low-income consumers, along with the

affluent, into paying ridiculously high prices for low-quality meats, potatoes,

vegetable oil, and sugar. However, the high dollar-and-cent costs are but the

tip of the iceberg. The true costs of quick food must include the costs of poor

health, lost dignity in work, degraded landscapes, and ethical and moral

decay in business matters, including international trade and investment. We are

paying a tremendously high price for the time saved by choosing quick food.

Thankfully, we still have alternatives – at least for many of the things we

eat. We can buy from local farmers who are committed to producing foods by

ecologically sound and socially responsible means – i.e. sustainable

agriculture. We can locate such farmers through “community food circles,â€

which

provide directories of local producers who sell direct to consumers. We can

“shopâ€

at farmers markets, join CSAs, seek out restaurants that buy from local

farmers, or buy those few items in the supermarkets that are supplied by local

sustainable growers.

The food we buy from these local people may not be as quick, convenient, or

cheap as the food we could buy at a local fast food joint or supermarket. But,

it may well be more than worth the time, effort, and money that we have to

spend to get it. A friend of mine is fond of saying, “eating is a moral

act.â€

It is. The food we choose has an impact upon the lives of other people, upon

the earth, and upon the future of humanity. When all of the costs are

counted, we simply cannot afford the high costs of cheap food.

Published in Sustaining People through Agriculture column, Small Farm Today,

July/August, 2001 issue.

About the Author...

John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of

Missouri, Columbia. John was raised on a small dairy farm in southwest Missouri

and received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the

University of Missouri. He worked in private industry for a time and spent

thirty years in various professorial positions at North Carolina State

University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia, and University of

Missouri before retiring in early 2000. Since retiring, he spends most of his

time

writing and speaking on issues relate to the sustainability of agriculture.

Ikerd is author of Sustainable Capitalism, Kumarian Press Inc., A Return to

Common Sense, _R. T. Edwards Inc._ (http://www.rtedwards.com/books/171/) ,

Small Farms are Real Farms, and Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainable in American

Agriculture, forthcoming from Acres USA and the University of Nebraska Press.

A complete vita and selected writings are available at

http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/