ABSTRACT
I am not a professional economist. Perhaps that is why I am always a little uncomfortable with attempts to reduce ‘costs’ to ‘currency’. There are many different ways of assigning a monetary cost to, say, diminished biodiversity or ecosystem services that result from current food system practices. Yet, does that dollar value constitute the real cost of cheap food? We can and should do whatever we can to bring economics into ecology. I just worry that these monetary values will dominate food policy discussions, leaving non-monetized values hidden in the shadows of silent speculative thought.
