THE HIGH COST OF CHEAP FOOD

The high cost of cheap food
John Ikerd

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.

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

The price of convenience
The costs of making food quick and convenient probably are no less that the cost of making food cheap.  Nearly 80% of consumer food costs 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.

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 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.”  It is.  When all of the costs are counted, we simply cannot afford the high costs of cheap food.