Recovering From the End of the Cheap Food Era

As explained elsewhere, the end of the era of cheap food is over and it will have a number of important and damaging implications. What can be done to make the situation better?

The easy response is, of course, rely upon science to provide answers. After all, much of the food we eat in the western world today is so highly processed that we would have no way of knowing what part of an animal or vegetable it is really made from – and might recoil from it if we actually knew. Science fiction is full of stories of people eating an apparently delicious and varied diet which is in reality based on seaweed or protein substitutes grown in a vat. Yet science has also contributed to food-based diseases and health problems, not least obesity. Perhaps society should make some effort to resolving the problem as well.

The most likely means of reducing food costs is to focus more on local production. This will reduce transportation costs – with the rising cost of oil these become increasingly significant. Refraining from flying fruit from tropical countries to northern Europe will make supermarket life less interesting but would also help to reduce carbon emissions. British people born more than a couple of decades ago will remember the poverty of the greengrocery shops outside of summer and autumn with some concern. Yet greenhouse techniques have advanced to some extent and climate change in any case makes the range of production possible in an area constantly subject to change.

A change in production of food types will also be required. Currently, market-based choices mean that demand for and supply of meat is at a very high and indeed increasing rate. The production of meat is, in general, highly inefficient in terms of use of water and land and the grain that grows on it. Indeed, the larger the animal, the more inefficient is the production. As land and water become increasingly scarce resources, it will be necessary to switch production from meat to fruit and vegetables and to encourage diets to change accordingly. Presumably, governments will use a combination of market-based (e.g. tax) and educational incentives to encourage people to change their diet.

This usually turns out to be very difficult to do. Richer people will be able to maintain their diet of choice for longer than others, no doubt, while unexpected foodstuffs will become highly valued because of their scarcity or cost – servants in London during the nineteenth century had it written into their contracts that they would not have to eat salmon more than twice a week so plentiful were they in the Thames, while oysters were used as fillers or meat-extenders in pies. Whale meat was widely used on the home front in World War II. Who knows what will be the next big thing – or more likely the next staple to disappear from the dinner table?