Reality Cheques - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 53

support agricultural development, and a third time to clean up the
environmental and health side effects. Food looks cheap because we count
these costs elsewhere in society. As economists put it, the real costs are
not internalized in prices. 1
This is not to say that prices in the shop should rise, as this would
penalize the poor over the wealthy. Using taxes to raise money to support
agricultural development is also potentially progressive, as the rich pay
proportionally more in taxes, and the poor, who spend proportionally
more of their budget on food, benefit if prices stay low. But this idea of
fairness falters when set against the massive distortions brought about by
modern agricultural systems that, additionally, impose large environmental
and health costs throughout economies. Other people and institutions pay
these costs, and this is both unfair and inefficient. If we could add up the
real costs of producing food, we would find that modern industrialized
systems of production perform poorly in comparison with sustainable
systems. This is because we permit cost-shifting - the costs of ill-health,
lost biodiversity and water pollution are transferred away from farmers,
and therefore are not paid by those producing the food, or are included
in the price of the products sold. Until recently, though, we have lacked
the methods to put a price on these side effects.
When we conceive of agriculture as more than simply a food factory
- indeed, as a multifunctional activity with many side effects, then this idea
that farmers do only one thing must change. Of course, it was not always
like this. Modern agriculture has brought a narrow view of farming, and
it has led us to crisis. The rural environment in industrialized countries
suffers, the food we eat is as likely to do as much harm as good, and we
still think that food is cheap. The following words were written more than
50 years ago, just before the advent of modern industrialized farming:
Why is there so much controversy about Britain's agricultural policy, and why are
farmers so disturbed about the future?. . . After the last war, the people of these
islands were anxious to establish food production on a secure basis, yet, in spite of
public good will, the farming industry has been through a period of insecurity and
chaotic conditions.
These are the opening words to a national enquiry that could have been
written about a contemporary crisis. Yet they are by Lord Astor, written
in 1945 to introduce the Astor and Rowntree review of agriculture. This
enquiry was critical of the replacement of mixed methods with standard-
ized farming. The authors insisted that: 'to farm properly you have got to maintain
soil fertility; to maintain soil fertility you need a mixed farming system' . They believed
that farming would only succeed if it maintained the health of the whole