Reality Cheques - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 52

Chapter 3
Reality Cheques
The Real Costs of Food
When we buy or bake our daily bread, do we ever wonder how much it
really costs? We like it when our food is cheap, and complain when prices
rise. Indeed, riots over food prices date back at least to Roman times.
Governments have long since intervened to keep food cheap in the shops,
and tell us that policies designed to do exactly this are succeeding. In most
industrialized countries, the proportion of the average household budget
spent on food has been declining in recent decades. Food is getting cheaper
relative to other goods, and many believe that this must benefit everyone
since we all need to eat food. But we have come to believe a damaging myth.
Food is not cheap. It only appears cheap in the shop because we are not
encouraged to think of the hidden costs, in terms of damage to the
environment and to human health as a result of agricultural production.
Thus, we actually pay three times for our food - once at the till in the
shop, a second time through taxes that are used to subsidize farmers or