Is There a High Cost of “Cheap Food” Policies?

Nearly a half century ago the world was aroused by Rachel Carson’s (1962) apocalyptic message of Silent Spring. Carson’s successors in the alternative agriculture advocate (AAA) movement continue to be pessimistic regarding the nation’s food supply and environment. Professor Robert Paarlberg’s (2010) response is forthright:

In Europe and the United States, a new line of thinking has emerged in elite circles that opposes bringing improved seeds and fertilizers to traditional farmers and opposes linking those farmers to international markets. Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that “sustainable food” in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn’t work.

By default, organic farming is the food system of Africa and other impoverished regions of the world because farms are insufficiently productive to purchase synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, to acquire schooling to build human capital, to finance roads and other infrastructure essential for commercial agriculture, and to fund research developing improved varieties.

This essay mainly addresses U.S. AAA’s recent lament: The high cost of cheap food. Public policy, it is argued, in the form of farm commodity price and income support programs has made food artificially cheap, thereby contributing to chronic overeating and consequent cardiovascular and related maladies. On the other hand some analysts, by adding biofuel subsidies to the public policy mix, reject the “cheap food policy” finding. This essay further broadens the scope of extant public policies affecting food to encompass public investments in research, extension, education, and infrastructure to raise agricultural productivity. At issue is whether the U.S. has pursued a low cost food policy, and, if so, the impact on society’s health and well being. And do AAAs offer an attractive alternative?

This essay makes a case that sustainable agriculture requires modern science and technology to address very real problems of poverty, disease, violence, and hunger. Policy digressions into promoting organic, local, and slow foods produced on small farms risk loss of agricultural productivity essential for improving well being of people in rich and poor countries alike.

Download the full essay here: https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/9/29991/files/2010/09/0902LutherPaper.pdf