段落A

For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high, and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty-first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate cash. In the west at least, most food is now far cheaper to buy in relative terms than it was in 1960. The cost is in the collateral damage of the very methods of food production that have made the food cheaper: in the pollution of water, the enervation of soil, the destruction of wildlife, the harm to animal welfare and the threat to human health caused by modern industrial agriculture.

段落A：
在过去四十多年里，食品成本一直在上涨。如今已经达到一个阶段，越来越多的人认为食品成本太高了，降低食品成本将是21世纪的重大挑战之一。然而，这个成本并不是指即时的现金。至少在西方，与1960年相比，大部分食品的相对购买成本现在要便宜得多。这个成本体现在通过使食品更便宜的生产方法所带来的副作用上：水源污染、土壤贫瘠、野生动物灭绝、对动物福利的伤害以及现代工业农业对人类健康的威胁。

段落B

First mechanisation, then mass use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, then monocultures, then battery rearing of livestock, and now genetic engineering – the onward march of intensive farming has seemed unstoppable in the last half-century, as the yields of produce have soared. But the damage it has caused has been colossal. In Britain, for example, many of our best-loved farmland birds, such as the skylark, the grey partridge, the lapwing and the corn bunting, have vanished from huge stretches of countryside, as have even more wild flowers and insects. This is a direct result of the way we have produced our food in the last four decades. Thousands of miles of hedgerows, thousands of ponds, have disappeared from the landscape. The faecal filth of salmon farming has driven wild salmon from many of the sea lochs and rivers of Scotland. Natural soil fertility is dropping in many areas because of continuous industrial fertiliser and pesticide use, while the growth of algae is increasing in lakes because of the fertiliser run-off.

段落B：
先是机械化，然后是大规模使用化肥和农药，接着是单一种植，然后是集约饲养家畜，现在又是基因工程——过去半个世纪以来，密集农业的进一步发展似乎势不可挡，农产品的产量也飙升。但它造成的破坏是巨大的。例如，在英国，我们最受喜爱的农田鸟类，如云雀、灰鹧鸪、白额琵鹭和黍鹀，已经从大片农村地区消失，甚至还有更多的野花和昆虫。这直接是由于过去四十年来我们生产食品的方式所导致的。成千上万英里的树篱、成千上万个池塘，已经从景观中消失。饲养三文鱼的粪便污染已经使得苏格兰的许多海湾和河流失去了野生鲑鱼。由于持续使用工业化肥料和农药，许多地区的土壤自然肥力正在下降，而湖泊中的藻类增长则是因为肥料径流。

段落C

Put it all together and it looks like a battlefield, but consumers rarely make the connection at the dinner table. That is mainly because the costs of all this damage are what economists refer to as externalities: they are outside the main transaction, which is for example producing and selling a field of wheat, and are borne directly by neither producers nor consumers. To many, the costs may not even appear to be financial at all, but merely aesthetic – a terrible shame, but nothing to do with money. And anyway they, as consumers of food, certainly aren’t paying for it, are they?

段落C：
把这一切放在一起看，就像是一个战场，但消费者很少能在餐桌上将这些关联起来。主要是因为所有这些损害的成本都是经济学家所说的外部性：它们是超出主要交易范围之外的，例如生产和销售一块小麦田，既不直接由生产者承担，也不直接由消费者承担。对于许多人来说，这些成本甚至可能看起来与金钱无关，仅仅是审美上的遗憾。而且无论如何，作为食品的消费者，他们肯定不会为此付费，对吧？

段落D

But the costs to society can actually be quantified and, when added up, can amount to staggering sums. A remarkable exercise in doing this has been carried out by one of the world’s leading thinkers on the future of agriculture, Professor Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex. Professor Pretty and his colleagues calculated the externalities of British agriculture for one particular year. They added up the costs of repairing the damage it caused, and came up with a total figure of ￡2,343m. This is equivalent to ￡208 for every hectare of arable land and permanent pasture, almost as much again as the total government and EU spend on British farming in that year. And according to Professor Pretty, it was a conservative estimate.

段落D：
但实际上，社会上的成本是可以量化的，当这些成本加起来时，可能是惊人的数字。英国埃塞克斯大学环境与社会研究中心主任、全球农业未来领域的顶级思想家之一朱尔斯·普里蒂教授进行了一项非凡的研究。普里蒂教授和他的同事们计算了英国农业的外部成本，针对特定的一年进行了统计。他们总结出修复农业造成的损害的成本，并得出了一个总额为23.43亿英镑的数字。这相当于每公顷耕地和永久牧草地208英镑，几乎是该年度英国农业政府和欧盟支出的两倍多。而且据普里蒂教授称，这还是保守估计。

段落E

The costs included: ￡120m for removal of pesticides; ￡16m for removal of nitrates; ￡55m for removal of phosphates and soil; ￡23m for the removal of the bug cryptosporidium from drinking water by water companies; ￡125m for damage to wildlife habitats, hedgerows and dry stone walls; ￡1,113m from emissions of gases likely to contribute to climate change; ￡106m from soil erosion and organic carbon losses; ￡169m from food poisoning; and ￡607m from cattle disease. Professor Pretty draws a simple but memorable conclusion from all this: our food bills are actually threefold. We are paying for our supposedly cheaper food in three separate ways: once over the counter, secondly through our taxes, which provide the enormous subsidies propping up modern intensive farming, and thirdly to clean up the mess that modern farming leaves behind.

段落E：
这些成本包括：1.2亿英镑用于除去农药；1600万英镑用于除去硝酸盐；5500万英镑用于除去磷酸盐和土壤；2300万英镑用于水公司除去饮用水中的隐孢子虫；1.25亿英镑用于野生动物栖息地、树篱和干石墙的损害；11.13亿英镑来自可能导致气候变化的气体排放；1.06亿英镑来自土壤侵蚀和有机碳损失；1.69亿英镑来自食物中毒；6.07亿英镑来自牛病。普里蒂教授从所有这些中得出一个简单而令人难忘的结论：我们的食品账单实际上是三重的。我们以三种不同的方式付费购买所谓更便宜的食品：首先是在柜台上，其次是通过我们的纳税，为现代密集农业提供巨额补贴，第三是为清理现代农业所留下的混乱支付费用。

段落F

So can the true cost of food be brought down? Breaking away from industrial agriculture as the solution to hunger may be very hard for some countries, but in Britain, where the immediate need to supply food is less urgent, and the costs and the damage of intensive farming have been clearly seen, it may be more feasible. The government needs to create sustainable, competitive and diverse farming and food sectors, which will contribute to a thriving and sustainable rural economy, and advance environmental, economic, health, and animal welfare goals.

段落F：
那么，食品的真实成本能够降低吗？摆脱工业农业作为解决饥饿问题的方法对一些国家来说可能非常困难，但在英国，供应食品的紧迫需要较小，密集农业的成本和破坏已经明显可见，这可能更为可行。政府需要创造出可持续、具有竞争力和多样化的农业和食品部门，这将有助于繁荣和可持续的乡村经济，并推进环境、经济、健康和动物福利目标。

段落G

But if industrial agriculture is to be replaced, what is a viable alternative? Professor Pretty feels that organic farming would be too big a jump in thinking and in practices for many farmers. Furthermore, the price premium would put the produce out of reach of many poorer consumers. He is recommending the immediate introduction of a ‘Greener Food Standard’, which would push the market towards more sustainable environmental practices than the current norm, while not requiring the full commitment to organic production. Such a standard would comprise agreed practices for different kinds of farming, covering agrochemical use, soil health, land management, water and energy use, food safety and animal health. It could go a long way, he says, to shifting consumers as well as farmers towards a more sustainable system of agriculture.