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A farmer in each year can produce enough food to feed a hundred people, according to Pollan (2001), but this productivity comes with a heavy price: "The modern industrial farmer cannot grow that much food without large quantities of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and fuel. This expensive set of 'inputs,' as they are called, saddles the farmer with debt, jeopardizes his health, erodes his soil and ruins its fertility, pollutes the groundwater, and compromises the safety of the food we eat" (Pollan, 2001, p. 190). These accrued costs accumulated through generations may lead to catastrophic consequences such as global warming and scarcity of edible food and drinkable water.
The drive to industrial efficiency blinded us to several hidden costs of food production. Orr (1994) identifies six of the costs that, if we intend to maintain sustainable growth, need to be curbed. The first obvious cost of industrial food production is the damage to the planet Earth. The average rates of soil erosion today vastly outnumber the rates at which soil is created. According to one study, the soil erosion costs the United States $44 billion each year (Orr, 1994, p. 173). Pesticides used in agricultural production cause environmental and health damages, including pesticide-caused cancer. Food packaging and the use of disposable diapers for babies further damage the environment (ibid). These are some of the costs that are not usually included in the accounting systems used to calculate food production today.
The second cost of food production is the loss of farms and farmers. So-called "super farms" have driven away many farmers from jobs, thus killing the unique expertise only people in rural communities can possess (third cost) (Orr, 1994, p. 175). The fourth cost is the destruction of Jefferson's dream of agrarian America by big businesses...
The food industry today is concentrated in the hands of a few corporations that use chemical additives and ingredients in greater levels, abuse their monopolistic powers and control the prices as well as farmers who have lost control of agricultural economies. The fifth cost, Orr argues, is related to "costs of future investment and capital depreciation"; increasing dependence "upon oil, which is no longer abundant in the United States and the use of which adds to global warming, ecological devastation, and political insecurity" (Orr, 1994, p. 177). And the final cost of industrial food system is its damage to our health. Higher concentration of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and artificial hormones contained in food leads to a variety of diseases, ranging from obesity, heart disease, and tooth decay.
Industrial and technological productivity in food production came with a heavy price. In order to address this problem, we need to start thinking more seriously about ecological economics, ensuring that the development in the future will not be associated with meeting our insatiable needs only, but will be measured in terms of benefits to human society as well as the natural ecosystem. If we do not adopt this approach to economic development, the price we will have to pay in the future may be beyond the capacity of humans and the planet Earth.
References
McDonough, W., & Braungart, M. (2002) From cradle to cradle: remaking the way we make things. New York: North Point Press.
Orr, D.W. (1994) Earth in mind: on education, environment, and the human prospect. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Pollan, M. (2001) The Botany of desire: a plant's eye view of the world. New York: Random House.
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