Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World

by Carolyn Steel

In reality, ‘cheap food’ is an oxymoron – an illusion created by industrial producers and governments keen to disguise the true cost of living. While externalities such as deforestation, pollution and climate change are accounted for elsewhere, industrial farmers who would otherwise struggle to make a living from the low prices we pay for food are subsidised by the state. So what might the world look like if, instead, we were to internalise the true cost of our food? The answer is that industrial farming would rapidly become unaffordable, while ecologically produced organic food would emerge as the bargain it has always been. Buying food would become a virtuous circle, in which the market would favour foods that nurtured nature, animals and people. Ethical, ecological producers would sell more produce, so gaining some of the economies of scale now reserved for industrial agri-food giants. Schumacher’s farmer could afford to grow organic food as well as eat it.