By Barbara Prieto
The Rising Costs of Food By John Cloud Thursday, Jun. 21, 2007, TIME Magazine
The reasons that food costs more are simple: most of what we eat is shipped great distances, and gas is spectacularly expensive. Also, demand for ethanol has caused the price of corn to spike, and thousands of processed foods contain derivatives like high-fructose corn syrup. Climbing food prices sound scary…. But it actually would be good if food cost a great deal more.
A little historical perspective: despite the recent price run-up, Americans still spend less to feed themselves than any other people on the planet–probably less than any monetized society in history. Just 9.9¢ of each dollar we spend is for food, down from 23.4¢ in 1929. By comparison, 16% of household expenditures in Britain go to food; Brazilians spend 23%, Thais 29%.
Americans don’t spend much on food largely because we just don’t want to. As a society gets richer, its people tend to use their extra income for things like recreation and education, not daily sustenance. This relationship between food and income–as you get rich, you spend proportionately less to eat–has held so strongly over so many generations that economists have given it a name: Engel’s law (for Ernst Engel, a 19th century statistician). The foodie revolution that began in the ’70s–arugula over iceberg, short ribs over brisket, etc.–has challenged Engel’s law among élites who will pay…. (But)… most Americans aren’t spending more on food.
We simply don’t have to. During the Depression, the government began subsidizing commodities like corn. Today, against all logic, the subsidies continue, and corn-derived snacks and Cokes are so cheap and convenient that, as University of Washington epidemiologist Adam Drewnowski argues, it’s perfectly rational, on a dollar-per-calorie basis, to buy them. (Fresh fruits and vegetables aren’t subsidized, and by nature they cost more to store and ship.) Drewnowski estimates it would cost 100 times as much to get the same amount of energy from fresh raspberries as from a typical packet of cookies.
Still, there are hidden costs to cheap calories. Environmental damage is one–in the postwar race to the lowest possible price, farmers applied oceans of pesticides and fertilizers–but obesity is the most obvious. A common objection to ending subsidies is that people will go hungry, and indeed some Americans can’t afford to eat: in 2005, according to the USDA, 2.9% of households had at least one member who went hungry at least once the previous year. But the U.S. has a bigger problem with overnutrition.
But if food is more expensive, won’t we simply eat more cookies and fewer raspberries? In the short run, yes, although ….on a dollar-per-nutrient basis, healthy food is not more expensive. Lab studies have shown that fruits and vegetables are also more satiating–they make you feel fuller than junk food even though they have fewer calories. In short, we should stop subsidizing junk. To address hunger more directly, we could take that money and use it to increase the miserably small amounts we give people on food stamps. We should also spend a little to help food banks offer fresher locally grown food.
As the great Italian food expert Carlo Petrini points out in his newly translated Slow Food Nation (Rizzoli; 262 pages), agriculture has become “completely detached from the lives of billions of people, as if procuring food had become a matter of course and required no effort at all.” But one way or another, we will pay for all that we’re eating.
The above neatly encapsulates many concerns. Not only processed foods but most animal proteins also are dependent on corn/soy (and everyone becoming vegan is not the fix, at least not without a long wind-down of the meat and dairy industry). Food production and transport is a major factor in the global-warming trend. Mono-culture farming and genetic modification of seed stock increasingly pose threats to food security. And the rest of the world seems bent on following the United States down this dangerous path.
How do I know this, and why do I care? These are some of the influences on my journey so far:
My grandparents kept a beautiful vegetable garden, and a “root cellar” full of home-canned goods (my grandmother was also a tremendous cook and baker), and had friends outside of their hometown of Youngstown OH with a large farm which was a wondrous place to visit – best sweet corn ever! However, yard work was a burdensome chore to my parents, who never planted anything except permanent landscaping and the occasional flower.
So when I, under the influence of impoverished friends who were paying their own way, planted my first vegetable garden while still a Junior in college, in Austin TX, in the summer, my family thought I was a bit nuts. But the satisfaction derived from successfully nurturing a healthy plant, and having it give back something tasty and nourishing in return, has never left. I just hope it doesn’t skip the next generation too! It is comforting to know how to produce food, and yet strangely odd, given the course of history so far, that it would be anything but a common skill (don’t get me started on the dying art of cooking!).
It was the State of Florida that drove me to the Native Plant Society, when in September, 1999 (on what turned out to be the last day of the boondoggle War on Canker [no grudges here]), they cut down our five large, mature, very healthy citrus trees.
Our yard was barren and we were bereft; a Giant Swallowtail butterfly, hovering around the leaves of the grapefruit trees (a larval host plant) as the pieces were hauled to the chipper, decided our new direction. I wanted to learn about butterfly gardens so she would come back, and water-friendly gardening since we no longer had a well, but I learned far more than that. And it was a more or less direct path from there to organic food and local food, by way of Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (also recommended: Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan).
When people say that the “organic food is too expensive”, I’m always tempted to ask them Who is paying the hidden balance of their food cost? and Why is it OK for the US to consume such a disproportionate share of the world’s resources, in part to produce “cheap” food? and How is it alright for our farm subsidies to put farmers in other countries out of work so that we can have even “cheaper” food? For now, it’s a price that the planet is mostly absorbing, but the bill is coming due.
However, with conscious shopping, seasonally appropriate organic fruits and vegetables are insignificantly more expensive than conventional, if at all. The really expensive things at (e.g.) Whole Foods are the European cheeses and other things that have come great distances and we don’t actually need to buy very often. We don’t really need organic processed food any more than we need conventional, but to have some kid snacks with no unpronounceable ingredients is worth a bit extra (for, as Michael Pollan says, it’s only OK to eat junk food when we cook it ourselves, but also, don’t buy food with ingredients your grandmother wouldn’t recognize).
And the extra $1.00 or so between organic milk and hormone-laden, ultra-pasteurized, nutrient-deficient milk, for our children or ourselves? Priceless, as the commercial says.
This hasn’t been a journey without conflict, as it has made my formerly lucrative career, as a marketer of fast food, untenable to me. I can’t seem to leave my concerns at home and head off to work without them, so what now? I’m seeking that answer.
Peace.
