Real Cost of Cheap Food

This thought-provoking, accessible book critically examines the dominant food regime on its own terms, by seriously asking whether we can afford cheap food and by exploring what exactly cheap food affords us.The author shows why today's global food system produces just the opposite of what it promises. The food produced under this regime is in fact exceedingly expensive. Many of these costs will be paid for in other ways or by future generations and cheap food today may mean expensive food tomorrow. By systematically assessing these costs the book delves into issues related, but not limited to, the food system, the environment, sustainable development, health and social justice. In this new edition the author brings all data and citations fully up to date. Increased coverage is given to many topics including climate change, vertical agriculture, global pandemics, geopolitical instability, agriculture 4.0, alternative proteins and food justice. Detailing the numerous ways that our understanding of food has narrowed, such as its price per ounce, combination of nutrients, yield per acre, or calories, the book argues for a more contextual view of food when debating its affordability. Expanding an innovation introduced in the second edition, concrete case studies of collective mobilization can be found throughout all chapters to support a narrative that balances being critical with being hopeful.This book is essential reading for those interested in critical food studies, food and agriculture and a sustainable and socially just food system.

"Michael Carolan is one of the world’s leading scholars in the political economy of food and farming. In this book he harnesses his considerable skills as a social scientist and public intellectual to argue that the global food system is not only based upon questionable and shaky, biological, economic and social foundations, but also fails to deliver what it promises – nutritional, healthy and affordable food for a burgeoning world population. Professor Carolan presents a comprehensive and compelling analysis of the forces shaping current food and farming trajectories, the winners and losers in the food system, the options available to those wanting to challenge and, ultimately, to overhaul today’s unsustainable global foodscape." – Geoffrey Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Queensland, Australia"A very readable romp through the breadth and depth of externalities generated by capitalism’s demand for cheap food." – Raj Patel, Research Professor, Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, US, and author of Stuffed and Starved: From Farm to Fork the Hidden Battle for the World Food System"With food continuing to comprise a declining share of household expenditure in rich and middle-income countries, a trend heralded by proponents as a vindication of the modern food system, Carolan provides a necessary wake-up call alerting us to the widely accumulating problems that conventional price calculations ignore. Almost encyclopaedic in range yet entirely conversational in tone, this book strikes just the right note in exploring how fundamentally flawed our ‘cheap food’ system is. Set to become a food student’s bible!" – Colin Sage, author of Environment and Food (2012), University College Cork, Republic of Ireland

Michael Carolan is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Food Systems Institute at Colorado State University, USA. He is the author of several books including The Sociology of Food and Agriculture, 3rd edition (Routledge, 2021), A Decent Meal: Building Empathy in a Divided America (2021), and Society and the Environment: Pragmatic Solutions to Ecological Issues, 4th edition (Routledge, 2024).