However, the really big issue we need to
consider is how conventional, agri-industrial
techniques are able to achieve the success they
do, and how we measure that success. And here
I come to the aspect of food production that
troubles me most. The well-known commentator on food
matters Michael Pollan pointed out recently
that, so far, the combined market for local and
organic food, both in the United States and
Europe, has only reached around two or three percent
of total sales. And the reason, he says, is quite
simple. It is the difficulty in making sustainable
farming more profitable for producers and
sustainable food more affordable for consumers.
With so much growing concern about this, my
International Sustainability Unit carried out a
study into why sustainable food production
systems struggle to make a profit, and how it is
that intensively produced food costs less. The
answer to that last question may seem obvious,
but my ISU study reveals a less apparent reason.
It looked at five case studies and discovered
two things: firstly, that the system of farm subsidies
is geared in such a way that it favors
overwhelmingly those kinds of agricultural
techniques that are responsible for the many
problems I have just outlined; and secondly, that
the cost of that damage is not factored into the
price of food production. Consider, for example,
what happens when pesticides get into the water
supply. At the moment, the water has to be
cleaned up at enormous cost to consumer water
bills; the primary polluter is not charged. Or
take the emissions from the manufacture and
application of nitrogen fertilizer, which are
potent greenhouse gases. They, too, are not
costed at source into the equation.
This has led to a situation where farmers are
better off using intensive methods and where
consumers who would prefer to buy sustainably
produced food are unable to do so because of
the price. There are many producers and consumers
who want to do the right thing, but as
things stand, doing the right thing is penalized.
And so this raises an admittedly difficult
question: Has the time arrived when a long,
hard look is needed at the way public subsidies
are generally geared? And should the recalibration
of that gearing be considered so that it helps
healthier approaches and techniques? Could
there be benefits if public finance were redirected
so that subsidies are linked specifically to
farming practices that are more sustainable, less
polluting, and of wide benefit to the public interest,
rather than what many environmental
experts have called the curiously "perverse" economic incentive system that too frequently
directs food production?
The point, surely, is to achieve a situation
where the production of healthier food is
rewarded and becomes more affordable and the
Earth's capital is not so eroded. Nobody wants
food prices to go up, but if it is the case that the
present low price of intensively produced food
in developed countries is actually an illusion,
only made possible by transferring the costs of
cleaning up pollution or dealing with human
health problems onto other agencies, then could
correcting these anomalies result in a more
beneficial arena where nobody is actually worse
off in net terms? It would simply be a more
honest form of accounting that may make it
more desirable for producers to operate more
sustainably -- particularly if subsidies were
redirected to benefit sustainable systems of
production. It is a question worth considering,
and I only ask it because my concern is simply
that we seek to produce the healthiest food
possible from the healthiest environment
possible -- for the long term -- and to ensure that
it is affordable for ordinary consumers.