Reality Cheques 43Concluding comments
In this chapter, I have adopted a fairly narrow economic perspective to set out
some of the real costs of modern agricultural and food systems. The side effects, or
externalities, of food production systems are substantial, yet these do not appear in
the price of food. The costs of lost biodiversity, water pollution, soil degradation
and ill health in humans are shifted elsewhere in economies and, because they are
difficult to identify and measure, they are easily lost. Allocating monetary values to
these externalities is only one part of the picture, as these methods are inevitably
inexact, but they do illustrate the size of the problem. The term multifunctional,
when applied to agriculture, implies a system that does more than just produce
food. Agriculture shapes landscapes, water quality, biodiversity and carbon stocks
in soils. All of these are important public goods, and represent new income oppor-
tunities for farmers. But progress is slow, as policy reforms have lagged behind.
There is a need for radical integration of policies to support transitions towards
agricultural systems that minimize their external costs and maximize their positive
side-effects.
Notes
1 On the cheapness of food, Donald Worster recognized this about a decade ago: ‘the farm experts
merely assume, on the basis of marketplace behaviour, that the public wants cheapness above all
else. Cheapness, of course, is supposed to require abundance, and abundance is supposed to come
from greater economies of scale, more concentrated economic organisation, and more industrial-
ised methods. The entire basis for that assumption collapses if the marketplace is a poor or imper-
fect reflector of what people want’ (Worster, 1993, p87).
2 See Astor and Rowntree (1945, p33, p47).
3 For more on George Stapledon, see Conford, 1988, pp192–193, pp196–197.
4 Despite my regular use of these five terms as capitals, I agree with the misgivings that many have.
Capital implies an asset, and assets should be looked after, protected and built up. But as a term,
capital is problematic for two reasons. It implies measurability and transferability. Because the
value of something can be assigned a single monetary value, then it appears to matter not if it is
lost, as we could simply allocate the required money to buy another, or transfer it from elsewhere.
But we know this must be nonsense. Nature, and its cultural and social meanings, is not so easily
replaceable. It is not a commodity, reducible only to monetary values. Nonetheless, as terms,
natural capital and social capital have the uses in helping to reshape thinking around basic ques-
tions such as what is agriculture for, and what system works best? For further discussions, see
Benton, 1998; Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988, 1990; Putnam, 1995; Costanza et al, 1997 and
1999; Carney, 1998; Flora, 1998; Grootaert, 1998; Ostrom, 1998; Pretty, 1998; Scoones, 1998;
Uphoff, 1998; Pretty and Ward, 2001.
5 Worster, 1993, p92. See also Michael Neuman of Texas A&M University, who resolves the con-
cept of sustainability into four very simple and compelling ideas: the rates of consumption, rates
of production, rates of accumulation and depletion, and rates of assimilation.
6 See Pretty, 1998; FAO, 1999; Conway and Pretty, 1991; Altieri, 1995; Pingali and Roger, 1995;
Conway, 1997.