ABSTRACT
The retail price of our food comes nowhere close to approximating its real cost (Carolan 2011b). One calculation places the annual external costs of agriculture (to say nothing of the broader food system’s ecological footprint) in Germany at US$2 billion, in the UK that figure is US$3.8 billion, and in the USA the total is US$34.7 billion. These average out to an additional cost of approximately US$81-343 per hectare of arable land and pasture (Pretty et al. 2001). Other analyses concentrate on specific components of production agriculture by calculating, for instance, the real cost of pesticides. Two highly cited estimates, summarized in Table 10.1, come from Leach and Mumford (2008) and Pimentel (2005). Note the considerable costs these estimates attribute to pesticide use in agriculture, which Pimentel places (for the US case alone) at a staggering US$9.6 billion annually.
