The price of cheap food

We are all looking for good prices for food. Particularly organic food. But most of us need to think a bit deeper in terms of what makes up the price of food. In the food system its possible to grow cheap food and grow good food. But good food is never cheap. Good food production methods, do not borrow from the future. What is the meaning of borrowing from the future?. Please read to find out.

1. Using chemical fertilizers produces good yields. But it is known to destroy water holding capacity of soil. Destroy life and overall biological and chemical balance of soil. Also, chemical induced rapid growth produces excess sugar than normal in the plant and that is like a magnet for pests which will once again lead to use of chemical pesticides. By destroying soil, we are gaining yields in the short term. This is borrowing from the future.
2. Farmers do monoculture (one crop instead of multiple crops) production methods to make it easy to manage crops. When you do monoculture, there are twin problems. There is need for labor in the fields only during planting, weeding and harvest. No need for daily labor. So farmers will not get permanent employment in the farms. This leads to lack of dependance on farming for livelihood. So farming becomes a part-time work. When they have only one crop to sell, farmers run the risk of getting poor prices for their perishable product and they lose money quite easily. When they have multiple crops growing, they can get better prices for some crops at least. These are the twin problems because of monocultures. Monocultures will not build good ecosystem in the farm. Polycultures build ecosystems below and above soil. Polycultures provide continuous work and full time employment at a farm. Monoculture is a way of creating artificial abundance that borrows from the future. Ecosystems get destroyed. Permanent employment opportunity in farms is lost. Artificial abundance makes food appear cheap due to over supply.
3. Using chemical pesticides is another way to grow cheap food by borrowing from future. To support large monocultures, farmers definitely need pesticides. When there is so much investment in one monoculture crop, the farmer is clearly afraid to not to lose his crop. When he grows ten crops, he can afford to lose one or two crops to pests. But if all his investment goes to one crop, he thinks its critical to save his crop and will use chemicals (unless organic sprays are available) to protect his crop. Using chemicals such as endo-sulphan, glyphosate and their other deadly cousins, leads to several illnesses in humans and animals that are exposed to them. The facts are well documented. This is yet again an example of borrowing from future for short term profits.
4. The Broker factor : The Vegetable broker who is now doing online sales as well, wields a lot of purchasing power while the farmer does not have power to sell his sudden abundance of monoculture crop. So the broker dictates the price for the farmer. The farmer sells the crop for much lesser price than fair price and will be forced to grow using cheaper methods in the future. The broker makes his cut and offers the perishable item for the so called cheaper price for end consumer. Sometimes the poorly informed end consumer thinks that it was a bargain. But what has happened is that we have put the farmer in to the dumps in the process of buying cheap food and the future of the farmer is at stake. So the farmer makes sure his children will not take up farming as the main profession. So we have destroyed the future generations of farmers in this process of buying cheaper food.
5. The awareness factor : The entire food production and distribution system relies on the lack of care about the system from the end consumer and the lack of awareness. There is a wall between where food is grown and where food is consumed. There is no effort from the consumer to understand this. By being careless, we allow this unfair system to flourish. In this process we destroy the future of farming. The farmer needs to fix the price and benefit from his hard work. The customer needs to make sure of that. Nobody else will. By buying directly from farmer or through farmer owned cooperatives, consumers help farmers continue their work.

• Thank you for reading. — For Mapletree farm — Shankar Venkataraman.