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 immedinte 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 producties that have made the food cheapers in the pollution of water. In enervation of soil, the destruction of wildlife, the harm to animal welfare and the threat to human health caused by moders industrial agriculture.