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Why Food Will Cost More

We are leaving an era during which food, particularly the kind of high-calorie, high-fat food that causes or aggravates obesity, has been artificially low. The cost of food is already increasing, and will be increasing more in the future. Here are the reasons as we see them:

First, the world's supply of fresh water is dwindling. As more nations come to realize that exporting grain is really just a way of giving scarce water away, they will rush to dismantle the system of subsidies that has encouraged low-cost grain exports.

Second, as peak oil arrives and the cost of petroleum and all things requiring petroleum increases, agriculture will pay a heavy toll. Think of all the ways we use petroleum for food. We use petroleum to make fertilizers, to make herbicides and pesticides, to treat the seeds we plant, to plant the seeds, to pump up scarce groundwater to irrigate the fields, to weed the crops, to harvest the crops, to separate the food from the chaff, to transport the food to processors, to transport the food from processors to distributors, to transport the food from distributors to retailers, and to transport the food from retailers to consumers. Dr. Albert Bartlett calls our modern system of mechanized agriculture a system of "using land to convert oil into food."

Third, but related to number two, is the U.S. obsession with diverting corn for the production of biofuels. It takes only the simplest of inquiries to realize that growing corn to produce ethanol doesn't make economic sense, but the distorted politics of the U.S. Presidency and Congress virtually guarantee that the U.S. will stay committed to this silly, futile, and destructive diversion of land and foodstock. The effect is already apparent, as the cost of corn flour has quadrupled in Mexico.

Fourth, the system of agricultural subsidies in the U.S. has been shaped almost exclusively by representatives from the states with large, mechanized farms, so it acts as a powerful incentive to encourage massive corporate agriculture and (by doing so) to discourage small, labor-intensive farms that are closer to consumers. As urban consumers see the cost of food increasing, they will demand that their representatives serve on those agriculture committees along with those from the mechanized agriculture states. The subsidy system will be recalibrated, and we will see an increase in the cost of the cheap food produced by mechanized agribusiness. Fortunately, this will level the playing field and allow energy-efficient food production to become more competitive with Cheerios and Twinkies, but it will mean higher costs for food for most Americans.

Our system of food production, marketing, and consumption rests on a queer pact between producers and consumers: the price will stay low, and we consumers won't ask about its quality. We will assume that all food is equal in quality, and we will believe our government when it tells us that factory farm food is just as nutritious as the real thing. When we begin to notice the quality of food, we will seek out higher quality food, which is usually (not always, but usually) more expensive.