The Steep Costs of Cheap Food
A perfectly grilled steak—a spicy pasta dish—a pizza loaded with toppings—a fresh mixed salad—a towering cheesecake. Aren’t you glad you can enjoy good food? All living things need nourishment to survive, but we humans make our meals an art.
Ever considered why that is so? The reason is profound: Humans alone are meant to develop character, and food gives us an excellent means of doing so.
Plowing Under the Garden of Eden
Think about it: This is why man’s original home was a garden.
When God made the idyllic Garden of Eden, He designed it to require careful management—intelligent human effort—to achieve its full potential. He placed Adam and Eve there and instructed them “to dress it and to keep it”—to work it and take care of it. He gave them dominion over the plants and animals and taught them how to care for them—and to use them for food (e.g. Genesis 1:28-30; 2:15-20).
Having created all these things for man’s use, God intended them to provide invaluable lessons in responsible, humane stewardship. The growing, producing, preserving and eating of food was meant to build character. Human beings were created to have to make decisions about how we produce and acquire our nourishment.
God helped in this undertaking by giving several laws governing agriculture and animal husbandry. Among them were commands enjoining kind treatment of animals (e.g. Deuteronomy 22:6-7, 10, 4; 25:4; 14:21; Leviticus 22:27-28). God expected livestock to receive proper care and attention so as to be in good health (e.g. Leviticus 1:3; 22:19-24; Deuteronomy 17:1). He commanded that the land be rested every seven years, to allow animals to roam on it and fertilize it in order to rebuild the nutrients of the soil (Leviticus 25:3-7).
This system is simple, natural and character-building. It functions in perfect accordance with the overarching principle of God’s law of love: that we should treat others as we want to be treated (Matthew 7:12). When God’s laws are respected, not only do things naturally work as they were designed to, but God also gives extra blessings such as favorable weather and more abundant harvests (e.g. Deuteronomy 28:4-5, 8, 12). Everyone enjoys nutritional food, a pleasant environment and vigorous health.
Now let’s shift our focus back to today: the grocery store you visited yesterday; the restaurant you dined in last week. How does this food get to your fork, anyway?
In modern industrial agriculture, God is no longer God—efficiency is. The system is built to produce as much food on as little land for as little money as possible. There is nothing inherently wrong with that goal—but it has been aggressively pursued in near-total ignorance of, if not contempt for, those laws of God.
“The industrial food system is always looking for greater efficiency, but each new step in efficiency leads to problems,” said author Michael Pollan. “The industry’s approach is—when it has a systematic problem …—not to go back and see what’s wrong with the system; it’s to come up with some high-tech fixes that allow the system to survive.” Think about that. What that is saying is, it is all aimed at circumventing the curses caused by our sins.
Pollan is among a group of journalists, authors and filmmakers that, in the last few years, have done much to pull back the curtain on the heretofore little understood world of industrial food production. In bestselling books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma and mass-release films like Food, Inc., the inner workings of this awesome system have been laid bare for public scrutiny.
The problems are legion. Let’s quickly survey some of the worst of them.
Solar Power vs. Oil Power
Conventional farming as God meticulously designed it is powered by the sun. All work is done by people and animals, which are fueled by other animals and by plants, which get their energy from soils fertilized by the animals and from sunlight via photosynthesis.
Industrial farming, by stark contrast, is powered by fossil fuels. The fertilizer comes from natural gas and petroleum-powered mining operations. The pesticides are products of industrial chemical manufacturing. The tractors and other equipment needed to sow, harvest and process the plants run on diesel fuel. All told, it takes at least 75 gallons of oil to grow an acre of corn, for example. On top of that, the trucks and trains that transport the food from farm to processing plant to supermarket also require petroleum-based fuel. And the typical item of food in the industrial food supply chain travels 1,500 miles before being consumed.
Besides producing far more pollution, this means that any disruptions in oil, coal or gas supplies will directly affect our food supplies. “We eat a lot of oil without knowing it,” said Pollan in the film Food, Inc. “To bring a steer to slaughter, it’s like 75 gallons of oil. So what we’re seeing is that this highly efficient machine does not have the resilience to deal with shocks, such as the spike in oil prices.”
Fertilizers are a classic study in the law of unintended consequences. They have been one of the biggest drivers of increased agricultural efficiency. They are chief among the innovations that have enabled today’s farmers to squeeze, for example, 200 bushels of corn or more out of every acre rather than the mere 20 bushels their great-grandparents got. “It has been estimated that more than 2 billion people would not be alive today were it not for the invention of the industrial process for making nitrogen fertilizer,” writes author Julian Cribb in his book The Coming Famine. “Indeed, fertilizers have been branded the principle cause of the human population explosion.”
In the singular pursuit of profit, however, food producers have used these artificial soil stimulants to get everything they possibly can out of the ground without respecting the command to dress and keep the land. The soil never, ever rests: As it gets sucked dry of nutrients, more chemicals are added to ensure that bumper crops keep coming, no matter how nutritionally depleted. Farmers use the fertilizer in enormous quantities, far more than they need—as “insurance” to guarantee the yields they need in order to make ends meet.
These chemicals can acidify farm soils and may have harmful health reactions in consumers. The excess fertilizer has quite a ripple effect: It ends up evaporating and polluting the skies; seeping into the soil and polluting ground water; and running into the rivers, traveling downstream and polluting the oceans. The excess nitrogen encourages algae growth in the seas, sucking up oxygen and effectively smothering other marine life. Nitrogen runoff out of the Mississippi River has created a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey.
Beyond that, our dependence on fertilizer means we really cannot afford any major interference in its supply if we are to sustain current food production. The fact that it requires enormous amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture doesn’t bode well for its remaining indefinitely in cheap, continuous supply.
Corn Is King
Genetic engineering is another example of efficiency-oriented science with inadvertent aftereffects. Seed companies in the 1930s increased yields by breeding corn seed, for example, to grow thicker, stronger and faster. Today, companies go even further by genetically modifying corn with genes from bacteria or other organisms. This practice apparently contravenes the law by which God intended to preserve the natural state in which He created such elements: “[T]hou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed” (Leviticus 19:19). Interestingly, most genetic modifications are intended to circumvent problems caused by breaking God’s law in the first place: They help plants better survive drought, flooding, heat, disease and pests—all curses that God promises to inflict us with when we disobey Him (e.g. Deuteronomy 28:23-24, 38-39).
As a result of artificial bioengineering, not only do we have higher crop yields, but also fewer but larger farms, growing enormous amounts of only a few types of crops, controlled by fewer and larger multinational corporations. Such streamlining makes the system increasingly precarious.
Here is one concrete example: For thousands of years, farmers have planted their crops with seeds saved from the previous year’s harvest. Today, in order to stay competitive (and because of corporate bullying), farmers largely have no choice but to buy new, high-producing but non-replicating, genetically modified seed direct from the seed companies each year. Thus a natural, functional, self-perpetuating process is broken, and the system is made susceptible to breakdowns.
As crop diversity has been sacrificed on the altar of efficiency, the food that has emerged the biggest winner is corn. Corn is cheap to grow in great abundance, and never cheaper than it is today, thanks to farm industrialization, bioengineering, fertilizers and pesticides. Additionally, the government has weighted the scales in its favor by subsidizing corn production—paying farmers to grow more of it. Thus, believe it or not, corn usually costs less to buy than to grow. To stay afloat financially, farmers must then grow still more of it (it doesn’t pay to use land for anything else), which drives the price down even further.
Food scientists have found a virtually unlimited number of uses for this plentiful cash crop: oil for frying; wax coating on fruits and vegetables; flour; modified starches; food coloring; preservatives; sweeteners; and so on. You’ll find it in most processed foods, often in several different forms (maltodextrin, ascorbic acid, xanthan gum, monosodium glutamate, et cetera ad nauseam). High-fructose corn syrup—now the number one source of sweetness in the American diet at 58 pounds per person per year—is used in most soft drinks and condiments. Corn even has a number of industrial, non-food uses, including within antibiotics, pharmaceuticals, glues, soaps, insecticides, fiberglass and explosives. There is a strong push to make corn ethanol an alternative to oil as a source of fuel.
Thanks to government subsidies, a lot of processed and fast food is artificially cheap. These foods tend to be very sweet and high in unhealthy fats, pleasing to the palate but with little nutritive value. Healthier foods are pricier. Unsurprisingly, people are consuming more of the cheap stuff than ever before. For people with lower incomes, there can be little alternative but to fuel up on the processed foods that end up exacerbating health problems like obesity and heart disease, which are becoming epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control now estimates that Type ii diabetes (what used to be called “adult-onset” diabetes) will affect a staggering one third of American children born in the year 2000. This is just one example of the enormous costs of “cheap” processed food.
The Life of Our Beasts
Another major use of cheap corn is as animal feed. God designed cows to roam large pastures ruminating on grass (e.g. Isaiah 30:23-24), fertilizing the soil naturally. But this natural, self-sustaining system is far too inefficient and unprofitable for today’s food companies. Instead they pack cows by the thousands into feedlots, where they stand ankle deep in their own manure and fatten up as quickly as possible at a feeding trough. And instead of grass, we’re forcing them—as well as chickens and even fish—to eat corn. Corn-fed cattle get fat quickly, and their meat gets the “marbled” white fat that makes it tastier. But this unnatural diet also creates a lot of problems. For one, corn makes cows sick. It causes their ruminating stomach to bloat and can give them acidosis, a kind of heartburn that leads to other major problems. In order to keep the sick cows alive long enough to get big enough to earn the most dollars at slaughter (no more than 150 days), feedlot operators pump them full of antibiotics. Ordinarily, cow manure makes excellent fertilizer—but the manure from feedlots is so full of toxins that it kills crops.
This all tramples on the biblical wisdom of Proverbs 12:10: “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.” Industrial meat production only seeks a bigger bottom line regardless of whatever horrific abuses are inflicted upon the animals—not to mention the workers who process them.
This profit-reigns approach that has driven cattle from small farms to feedlots has had the same effect on the processing of meat and other food. For example, instead of the thousands of slaughterhouses in the U.S. just a generation ago, today only 13 plants process the majority of the beef sold in the U.S. This ultra-efficient systematization has a serious side effect: It drastically increases the likelihood of dangerous pathogens making their way into our food supply. Thus, headlines about deadly outbreaks of E. coli and other bacteria have grown distressingly common.
Good Trees Produce Good Fruit
It would be a mistake to applaud the abundance of food that our industrialized system is able to generate without considering these chilling effects. As Jesus said in Matthew 7:16-17, “Ye shall know them by their fruits. … [E]very good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”
What fruits do we see from today’s food production system? Literally, we see them infused with fish genes, stripped of their ability to reproduce, increasingly tasteless, coated with wax (made from corn) and sprayed with bug poison, grown in a tortured process hundreds of miles away. We see small farms swallowed up by mega-farms. We see almost all food production and supply handled by gargantuan, multinational corporations that are unconcerned with the high hidden costs of the cheap food they produce. We see disease outbreaks, diabetes, obesity and failing health.
What if, recognizing these problems, we didn’t just keep coming up with yet more high-tech fixes that allow the system to survive? What if, instead of trying to continually patch over and prop up our fatally flawed modern food production, we returned to the Garden of Eden, its laws, and its God?