To produce large quantities of food cheaply, companies look for economies of scale, using chemicals to control weeds and pests instead of more labor-and space-intensive organic options and often packing animals into very crowded spaces.

The cost of this cheap food trickles down in many ways, including food safety issues (14 Americans die every day as a result of food-borne illness); increased use of antibiotics (more than half of all antibiotics used in North America are fed to livestock and 90 per cent are administered to make animals grow faster, not to treat infections); and water pollution (The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates agriculture is responsible for 70 per cent of the country’s water pollution).

“These things have to be important to you in order to get past the price you pay,” Sirois says. “We seem to have no problem paying $50 for Internet each month and $80, $90, $100 for a cellphone each month, so why do we want to pay the least possible for food?”

“We can’t seem to make the connection on a broad scale between food and health. Yes, we eat cheaply and poorly, but it adds to this incredible health expenditure on the other end,” Sirois says.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/food/Debunking+sustainable+food+myths/2086662/story.html

This comes as no surprise. I just think that it’s the nature of capitalism and food as big business. When you stop knowing who grows your food and it gets cheaper in the process, you probably stop caring about what is in it. I’m no armchair shrink, but there has to be a correlation.

yes, but the entire article goes further than just the snippet provided here.

it’s really about getting people to better understand the true value of their food. sort of like when ‘poor’ people buy shit food, but spend money on an xbox or a car.

I think that is why a movement like permaculture has such an important role to play in helping to provide systems that offset large scale ag biz ....

the sooner we start landscaping our properties with edible plants and trees and develop perennial food supplies, the sooner we will ween ourselves of non sustaining ag practices .... though the ag producers have been providing food items at a lower cost .... what is really happening is that they are destroying the valuable topsoil in the process and demanding water resources in a very inefficient ways

and in addition to the taking of resources like soila nd water, that ‘cheap produce’ is often also heavily subsidized with taxpayer money.