What are the implications of a chicken costing less than a cappuccino? How can you produce an animal to eat, get it packed and delivered to a supermarket, and make money for yourself and the retailer, for just £1.50? The answer is: focus on economics above all else, above animal welfare and above the environment. What sort of life does a pig or a cow or a chicken have when farmed in this way? What does the resulting run-off of excrement do to the fields and the community living nearby an intensive farming system? How do you keep animals alive, in a farming system that is so intensive that the average attrition rate is 11%?

These are not questions that you ask when you place your chicken or pork fillets under the grill. But it’s true that the quest for cheaper food has destroyed communities, wrecked the environment and affected human health. The reason that this still goes on, despite all the evidence, is because the companies that pursue this relentless economic strategy employ people, pay taxes, lobby governments, and keep the world going round.

Amazingly enough, there is a more serious issue. The relentless drive for economic growth through cheap food has resulted in the majority of the world relying mainly on four types of food: rice, potatoes, wheat and maize. The collapse of one of these crops would result in widespread famine and civil unrest.

We’re wobbling, at the moment, with wheat and maize riots in Mexico, Italy and Egypt. This isn’t Darfur – this is our doorstep. These are normal, middle-class people with jobs, fighting over a loaf of bread. Anyone who wants to know the effect of a population relying on one type of food, need only research the potato blight famine in Ireland in the 19th century.

As plants are more intensively farmed with more chemicals, they develop resistance, other pathogens arrive to attack them. And the response from the food industry is more chemicals.

For the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a global food industry was a no-brainer. But they didn’t think it through. Fifty years ago, diversity was a barrier to disease transmission. The average farm had more than ten crops that were all sold locally. Nowadays, with food transported long distances across borders, the rapid spread of disease is a likelihood, not a possibility. The chemical response ends up being consumed by you and me.

This year, potato blight will affect every crop in Britain, and the response from farmers, desperate to increase yields for supermarkets, that pay them for intensive production, will be a fungicide, the residue of which will be left on the product that we eat. Governments don’t care about farmers and how they farm, because there aren’t enough of them to form a big voting lobby, and because they need the economic juggernaut to keep on going.

The implication of the WTO-inspired global food industry is not just increased urbanisation, the destruction of rural communities, food travelling longer distances, animals being cruelly treated, the creation of monocultures, water courses being polluted, more chemicals in food and a rise in food allergies and soft tissue cancer – it is famine, and death.

A selection of food, farming and sustainability campaigns from Greenvoice:

• Climate Change tests Kenya’s worsening food deficit
• Change billions of lives. Including yours.
• Ending the Squander of Our Seas
• Calling on Government for a Freeze on GM
• Robbing from the Poor, Stealing from the Planet
• Food for Life Partnership
• Ugly Veggies - They have flavours too!
• Don’t Buy Battery!
• Reduce Food Catering Waste At Wimbledon
• GM Crops: The Right to Know

Photo by Greencolander.

What does this mean for the environment?

The sub prime issue will mean that the take-up for environmental improvement to homes in Europe will be reduced. When people are having trouble paying their mortgages, they will have less money to provide solar power and insulation to improve the efficiency of their homes. There is a danger that sub prime and the economy pushes out environmental concerns.

Large scale environmental projects like wind and solar projects will be tougher to finance, and investors in those projects will be few and far between.

There will be a flight to “quality” stocks with guaranteed cash flows. This may mean more money going into oil companies and retailers specialising in cheap foods, where environmental concerns and animal welfare take second place behind price. One good thing though, is that property development and real estate generally, will be more connected to the real economy.

Some countries, like Germany, will be extremely well positioned to take advantage of this economic shift because they have invested more heavily in renewables and environmental technologies.
In conclusion, sub prime will be bad for the environment because short term economic priorities will take precedence over a longer term, more enlightened approach to business.