Cheap food...

Being somewhat of a traveler, a wanabe connoisseur, and an aggie I am constantly looking at food comparing prices (among other things). One of my favorite things about Bangkok was the phenomenal food and the dirt cheap prices but the more I travel the more Thai food prices seem like an anomaly.

I heard somewhere that food prices in the US are some of the cheapest (per capita) prices in the world considering the efficiency of large scale farming I am not surprised (you can argue about sustainability, health, morals etc but it is dirt cheap compared to US incomes). I walk around and see prices in developing countries and compare them to the incomes there and I wince almost every time.

A co-worker of mine once mentioned that Afghan’s don’t save money very well, I have seen other cultures that save comparatively well but still, one needs food, and while local food is almost always cheaper it is still not “cheap” for locals, not compared to the US.

In the US and to a greater extend in Europe food is important, and good food is worth paying for but the ability to pay for it is a luxury so it tears me between efficiency and giving people the opportunities to spend less than 1/2-3/4ths of their income one food alone and the grassroots farming I always hear about in the west (support you local farmer etc [which I happen to agree with in the west but only because we can afford to make such choices]) which quite often is not able to provide people with as much food for a cheaper price compared to “factory farming”. Factory farming is improving but in baby steps (especially in the US) like Smithfield (huge pork producer) starting to let sows roam when not farrowing (before they were kept in cages small enough that they could not turn around; which is still standard practice for most large scale pork production).