Practice Set 7 Test 2 (C7T2) | The true cost of food

The True Cost of Food

A

For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high, and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate cashexternalitiesmechanisationpremiumthanh toán ngay bằng tiền mặt hoặc séc. In the West at least, most food is now far cheaper to buy in erosionrelativeenervationhedgerowstương đối terms than it was in 1960. The cost is in the collateral damage of the very methods of food production that have made the food cheaper: in the pollution of water, the lochsgeneticenervationmechanisationsự suy giảm chất lượng, sự suy thoái of soil, the destruction of wildlife, the harm to animal welfare and the threat to human health caused by modern industrial agriculture.

B

First arablemechanisationhedgerowscarried outsự cơ khí hóa, then mass use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, then monocultures, then battery rearing of livestock, and now genetic engineering – the onward march of intensive farming has seemed unstoppable in the last half-century, as the yields of produce have soared. But the damage it has caused has been batterylapwingmonoculturescolossalto lớn, khổng lồ. In Britain, for example, many of our best-loved farmland birds, such as the skylarkpesticideswelfareaestheticchim chiền chiện, the grey partridge, the lapwing and the corn bunting, have vanished from huge stretches of countryside, as have even more wild flowers and insects. This is a direct result of the way we have produced our food in the last four decades. Thousands of miles of hàng rào cây, thousands of ponds, have disappeared from the landscape. The brought downpesticidesbattlefieldfaecal filthrác thải, chất bẩn of salmon farming has driven wild salmon from many of the sea lochs and rivers of Scotland. Natural soil geneticfertilitythrivingcarried out(đất) sự màu mỡ is dropping in many areas because of continuous industrial fertiliser and pesticide use, while the growth of algae is increasing in lakes because of the fertiliser run-off.

C

Put it all together and it looks like a chiến trường, but consumers rarely make the connection at the dinner table. That is mainly because the costs of all this damage are what collateralalternativeeconomistserosionnhà kinh tế học refer to as externalities: they are outside the main transaction, which is for example producing and selling a field of wheat, and are borne directly by neither producers nor consumers. To many, the costs may not even appear to be financial at all, but merelylochsrun-offorganicchỉ là/đơn thuần aesthetic – a terrible shame, but nothing to do with money. And anyway they, as consumers of food, certainly aren’t paying for it, are they?

D

But the costs to society can actually be pesticidespasturecounterquantifiedxác định số lượng and, when added up, can amount to staggering sums. A remarkable exercise in doing this has been lochsrearingremovalcarried outthực hiện điều gì by one of the world’s leading thinkers on the future of agriculture, Professor Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex. Professor Pretty and his colleagues calculated the externalities of British agriculture for one particular year. They added up the costs of repairing the damage it caused, and came up with a total figure of £2,343m. This is equivalent to £208 for every hectare of welfareestimatearablesubsidies(đất) có thể trồng trọt/canh tác được land and permanent pasture, almost as much again as the total government and EU spend on British farming in that year. And according to Professor Pretty, it was a (ước tính) khiêm tốn/thận trọng estimate.

E

The costs included: £120m for removal of pesticides; £16m for removal of nitrates; £55m for removal of phosphates and soil; £23m for the removal of the bug Cryptosporidium from drinking water by water companies; £125m for damage to wildlife habitats, hedgerows and dry stone walls; £1,113m from emissions of gases likely to contribute to climate change; £106m from soil feasiblemarchrearingerosionsự xói mòn and organic carbon losses; £169m from food poisoning; and £607m from cattle disease. Professor Pretty draws a simple but memorable conclusion from all this: our food bills are actually threefold. We are paying for our supposedly cheaper food in three separate ways: once over the counterstaggeringcommitment toestimatequầy thanh toán, secondly through our taxes, which provide the enormous subsidies propping up modern intensive farming, and thirdly to clean up the mess that modern farming leaves behind.

F

So can the true cost of food be brought downbatterystaggeringemissionshạ xuống, làm tụt xuống? Breaking away from industrial agriculture as the solution to hunger may be very hard for some countries, but in Britain, where the immediate need to supply food is less urgent, and the costs and the damage of intensive farming have been clearly seen, it may be more normequivalentcollateralfeasiblekhả thi. The government needs to create sustainable, competitive and diverse farming and food sectors, which will contribute to a pesticideslochsestimatethrivingthịnh vượng and sustainable rural economy, and advance environmental, economic, health, and animal welfare goals.

G

But if industrial agriculture is to be replaced, what is a organicwelfarecollateralviablekhả thi/có khả năng thành công alternative? Professor Pretty feels that hữu cơ farming would be too big a jump in thinking and in practices for many farmers. Furthermore, the price partridgeemissionspremiumonwardphần trả thêm would put the produce out of reach of many poorer consumers. He is recommending the immediate introduction of a ‘Greener Food Standard’, which would push the market towards more sustainable environmental practices than the current welfarelochsnormcollateralquy phạm, tiêu chuẩn, while not requiring the full commitment to organic production. Such a standard would compriseexternalitiescollateralequivalentbao gồm agreed practices for different kinds of farming, covering agrochemical use, soil health, land management, water and energy use, food safety and animal health. It could go a long way, he says, to shiftingwelfareremovalaestheticthay đổi/chuyển/dời consumers as well as farmers towards a more sustainable system of agriculture.