Rubbish. Absolute rubbish. https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1256484578258272257

The primary "improvement" in the global food system in the last century has been in relationship to labor productivity: it takes less human labor to produce a calorie of consumable food. That means human labor can go to other productive (and pleasurably unproductive) things!

The problem, of course, is that "improvements" in labor productivity have disproportionately been siphoned off by capital: if food costs less, they pay you less, but you work more. That's been the story of food as a "big cheap" as @oikeios and @_RajPatel put it.

Meanwhile, the underlying "efficiency" of the system is, well, not more efficient but considerably less efficient if you look at it from ratios of calorie in: calorie out. We've replaced human labor with petrochemical inputs.

As an example, in the US in 1930 it took about 2.5 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of consumable energy. Today? It takes somewhere between 15 and 20 calories to produce 1 calorie of consumable food.

Of course, this energy expenditure isn't "free." The costs of wildly inefficient energy expenditures are global climate change, and they are already being borne already by the "climate" vulnerable. They will be borne by everyone in very short order.

Meanwhile, the environmental costs of the global food system far exceed global climate change: deforestation, ground water pollution, soil depletion, and, my personal favorite, rising dangers of zoonotic transfer.

On that front, "since 1940, agricultural drivers were associated with >25% of all — and >50% of zoonotic — infectious diseases that emerged in humans." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7091874/

And just wait until the antibiotic resistant diseases start popping off and people start dying from basic surgery and strep infections!

Sure, pal, nothing about this sounds "broken."

So we're left with the final "merit" of the global food system: if we discount all the serious ecological damage, at least from the perspective of the consumer there's always cheap food to buy! Right? RIGHT?!

First, this fundamentally misunderstands the causes of famines. The most serious famines in human history were not caused by lack of food. They were caused by the afflicted people in question not having the money to buy the food that was there. See Amartya Sen and Mike Davis.

So, sure, the global food system makes it so there's always "food to buy." But it also contributes to the wage dependency and poverty that ensures that, if food prices spike, people can't afford to buy the food--and they starve.

That's the story of famine and starvation post-Green Revolution in the 1970s: the food system is so laden with petrochemicals that when oil prices spike, food prices also spike, and urban consumers who are dependent on cash cropped imports can no longer afford adequate food.

Second, the global food system was supposed to have "eliminated" starvation, but, in reality, it has also transitioned large populations into chronic malnutrition, which is different than famine but similarly linked to high food prices.

Third, there's a question I will open, but not close: does this account for the *quality* of the food? Putting aside the question of quantity, and without privileging the affluent consumers who can buy "anything in the world," is the quality of the food better?