{"id":344,"date":"2017-07-14T19:44:46","date_gmt":"2017-07-14T19:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/?p=344"},"modified":"2017-07-14T22:22:56","modified_gmt":"2017-07-14T22:22:56","slug":"what-is-the-real-cost-of-our-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/what-is-the-real-cost-of-our-food\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Real Cost of Our Food?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is the real cost of our food?\u00a0 After reading Michael Carolan’s The Real Cost of Cheap Food<\/em>, I realized there are many hidden costs to the food choices that we make.\u00a0 In Carolan’s book, he outlines the complex commodity chains that our food products undergo on their way to our kitchen tables.\u00a0 At first, we may see this commodity chain as a reliable way for us to receive food and a productive way for farmers and manufacturers to ship out their products.<\/p>\n

However, this system of production can become quite fragile.\u00a0 An interruption from within this chain, such as a shortage of a particular crop, can easily heavily impact the economic stability across the globe.\u00a0 The job security of many farmers and laborers working in different countries can be determined just based off of one seasons yield.\u00a0 Not only this, but a chain reaction would occur, leading to an overall economic impact toward the price of those goods produced. Through all of this, the end result is still an affordable product for the consumer at the grocery store.\u00a0 This affordability, or “cheapness” is the main reason why there has been a shortage of local farmers.\u00a0 The monetary benefits are a lot less than the costs that these farmers have to endure to maintain their crops year after year.<\/p>\n

There are also other numerous constraints when it comes to the types of foods that we produce, such\u00a0<\/span>as the use of water, pollution and resources extracted.\u00a0 One of these constraints revolves around the use of what is called virtual water, which documents the size of our water footprint towards the production of a food product.\u00a0 Foods such as chocolate amount to large quantities of virtual water due to the exploitation of power relations, water scarcity and efficiency during harvesting and production.\u00a0 This is a helpful tool to place a new perspective upon the different types of food that we eat and helps us determine the background factors that give us a global reaction to our personal choices.\u00a0 As we contextualize the food system that we have, it’s important to address topics such as pollution, resources extracted, and how long we can continue this trend until we reach an epidemic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Picture Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.irinnews.org\/report\/94208\/bangladesh-government-shopping-farm-land<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is the real cost of our food?\u00a0 After reading Michael Carolan’s The Real Cost of Cheap Food, I realized there are many hidden costs to the food choices that we make.\u00a0 In Carolan’s book, he outlines the complex commodity chains that our food products undergo on their way to our kitchen tables.\u00a0 At first, we may see this commodity… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-systems-theory","category-systems-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}