The true cost of food
Even with food prices rising, the prices we pay at the grocery store don't reflect the true cost of food.
They don’t reflect the hidden costs of the factory farm model — of lost biodiversity from a shrinking seed supply controlled by a few companies, of soil eroding more rapidly than nature can rebuild it, of drinking water polluted by chemicals, of dead zones in oceans caused by runoff from excessive fertilizers, of deaths from foodborne illness each year, or of other medical costs from eating the results of it all.
Worldwatch Institute reported that the price of meat would double or triple if the full costs — fossil fuel use, groundwater depletion, chemical pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions — were included.
Author Frances Moore Lappe writes, "We have to see differently, then measure and count the real costs of producing food."
Who pays and when? There are ways to make responsible choices. To start, buy organic food and advocate policies that support a sustainable food system.
Read more about the true cost of food in the following articles:
Getting Real About The High Cost of Cheap Food; Bryan Walsh, TIME magazine, August 2009.
The True Cost of Food; Judith Yarrow and Trudy Bialic, Sound Consumer, May 2004.
The High Cost of Cheap Food (PDF); John Ikerd, Small Farm Today, July/August, 2001.
Farmer-in-Chief; An open Letter to the next president about how the food system impacts the health care crisis, energy independence, climate change, and other critical problems. Michael Pollan, New York Times Magazine, October 12, 2008.
Dispel the Myth That Cheap Food Comes Without High Costs; Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe, Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2002.
The World’s Growing Food-price Crisis; Time, February 23, 2008.