The Cost of Cheap Food

If you have been paying attention recently, you've probably seen this phrase used quite often. Cheap food isn't. It's expensive. It's expensive environmentally and socially. It destroys our land and water and our health. But, what people seem to have forgotten is exactly how expensive expensive food is. Moreover, they seem to have missed out on really noticing how expensive "cheap" food is.

We all know people who talk about living on Ramen. It's become a joke. Haha I'll eat Ramen for a month. But how many have actually eaten Ramen for a month? For about 6 months in college, I subsisted very meagerly. I got by, quite honestly, out of good fortune and better friends. Three of those months, I had a paycheck. I ate frozen burritos (lunch and dinner, breakfast is a luxury I didn't have), microwave popcorn, and Ramen. I drank water. I rode the bus to school on borrowed coinage. I paid $100 rent to a friend, and probably cost him more money than I actually contributed to the house. I lived on $10,000 that year, including college expenses, in Palm Beach County, FL. No mean feat. And yet, I was far better off than so many.

Poverty isn't something we really think about. It isn't something that we want to think about. We live in our happy, privileged Fresh Market world and think of "starving" as being something girls do to get skinny or artists do to renounce the evils of our society. It never occurs to us that, in truth, the "cheap pork" that is ruining Iowa never graces the tables of some families working multiple jobs to feed their kids. We talk about how horrible cheap food is without really having any idea how truly expensive what we think "cheap" is. Most of the people I've rubbed shoulders with think of McDonald's as a job for teenagers so they can buy trendy shit their parents refuse to waste money on. They don't think about the man who leaves that shift and then works as a mechanic for a shift and then goes off to clean theatres overnight to keep a roof over his family.

"Cheap" food is why we have the population we do. Now, maybe those neomalthusians out there don't have a problem with the logical conclusions here, but I do. We have four options for our food supply: 1. Purposely maintain the status quo, which is clearly untenable, but will continue to feed our numbers (even at a mere maintenance level); 2. Technological advancement enabling increased production with decreased energy and resources required (which will reduce food costs, improve food quality, and reduce the environmental impact); 3. The presumed prefered method, switching to a small-farm-based, organic food supply which will result in vastly increased food prices, reduced quantity, and may not actually improve food quality (and starve billions of people unable to pay Whole Foods prices); 4. Pretend there is no problem and wait for it to explode (what will probably happen).