by Amir Goren
Up until a couple of years ago, I thought of my food purchasing as a simple personal choice, divorced from its role within the greater food system ( Singer & Mason, 2006; Pawlick, 2006; Michael Pollan; see podcasts and slides from David Wallinga ’s illuminating recent presentation at the Rudd Center on this topic).
The food we buy and eat not only has health consequences for us and our families, but also moral, political, and economic consequences for our nation and for the world, and it amazes me how easy it is for us to ignore or fail to see the connections and ramifications.
For example, here are just some of the things you’re buying when you purchase beef from non-organic, non-locally produced factory farms (the source for over 80% of our nation’s beef and our cheapest food products):
- Corn – actually, you already paid for this through your taxes. You gave farmers billions of dollars every year, making corn artificially “cheap,” though it doesn’t even turn a profit. Cheap corn (unsuitable for human consumption) is used to feed cattle (that would naturally eat grasses, not grains).
- Pollution – with the high concentration of manure and lack of proper sewage on factory farms, you are literally paying for excrement in our nation’s rivers and contributing to noxious, concentrated stenches that plague farm workers and residents living in the vicinity of the farms.
- Unemployment – the current system encourages overcrowded, high-yield factory farms monopolized by a handful of huge, powerful companies, driving smaller farmers out of business.
- High price of healthy foods – the same system that drives smaller farmers out of business demands large and focused investments in single products (e.g., corn, soy, beef, or eggs), thus eliminating the kinds of diverse farms that offer fruits and vegetables and other products as well. Compared to subsidized corn-based products, healthy foods have become unaffordable, especially to low-income consumers.
- Pesticides – in the absence of diverse farms (with crop rotations that naturally discourage and resist the accumulation of pests), extensive use of pesticides is needed to keep single crops, such as corn, safe. This contributes to chemical pollution of our water.
- Antibiotics – you also pay for the overuse of medicine used to keep cattle from becoming sick in overcrowded, noxious, unsanitary environments.
- Decreased nutrition – factory-farmed fruits and vegetables have already lost a large percentage of their nutritive content over the course of the past century, as a result of monoculture farming, and factory-farmed beef contains traces of hormones and antibiotics, plus increased danger of E. coli contamination, etc.
- Health care – even if you don’t personally gain weight from the cheap prices and abundance of unhealthy, high-fat foods, you still pay for the higher insurance premiums that result from the growth of diet-related diseases such as Type II diabetes and cancer.
- Oil – you pay for the substantial amount of fuel needed to transport food over long distances from centralized factory farms to your local supermarket.
- More pollution – methane given off by cattle is a major source of greenhouse gases, and increased consumption of cheap and easily available meat around the world is making this an increasing threat to global warming. Moreover, the disproportionately large quantities of water and grain that go into producing a single pound of beef are contributing to an impending global water shortage.
- Advertising – about 5% of the cost of your food pays companies to advertise their products to you.
It’s important to note that not all of these costs show up directly in the actual price at the supermarket. The products only appear to be cheap because we don’t consider how much of our yearly taxes already went into subsidizing them, how much our insurance premiums are going up as a result of poor nutrition, and how much damage we’re doing to our environment.
I wonder what kinds of food purchases people would make if these various externalities showed up in the actual prices of the food products… If a hamburger cost $6 instead of $1, would people eat healthier food?
by Amir Goren
Up until a couple of years ago, I thought of my food purchasing as a simple personal choice, divorced from its role within the greater food system ( Singer & Mason, 2006; Pawlick, 2006; Michael Pollan; see podcasts and slides from David Wallinga ’s illuminating recent presentation at the Rudd Center on this topic).
The food we buy and eat not only has health consequences for us and our families, but also moral, political, and economic consequences for our nation and for the world, and it amazes me how easy it is for us to ignore or fail to see the connections and ramifications.
For example, here are just some of the things you’re buying when you purchase beef from non-organic, non-locally produced factory farms (the source for over 80% of our nation’s beef and our cheapest food products):
It’s important to note that not all of these costs show up directly in the actual price at the supermarket. The products only appear to be cheap because we don’t consider how much of our yearly taxes already went into subsidizing them, how much our insurance premiums are going up as a result of poor nutrition, and how much damage we’re doing to our environment.
I wonder what kinds of food purchases people would make if these various externalities showed up in the actual prices of the food products… If a hamburger cost $6 instead of $1, would people eat healthier food?