The book discusses how many of the items we purchase are underpriced because they do not account for ecosystems services and subsidies. This is his observations on agriculture:
China's failure to value water is one example of the failure of almost every country to value the nature world in the production of goods for the market. Ecosystem services such as pollination, water filtration, erosion control, soil fertility and regulation of water and climate systems are valuable, however, it's possible to hazard a price on quite how much they're worth. Returning to food, one New Zealand study estimated that the total economic value of ecosystem services in organic agriculture systems in New Zealand ranged from $1,610 USD to $19,420 USD per hectare annually, compared to conventional costs ranging from $1,270 USD to $14,470 USD per hectare annually. The value of ecosystem services in organic fields ranged from $460 USD to $5,240 USD per hectare annually versus $550 USD to $1,240 USD in conventional fields. In other words, farming systems that pay attention to sustainability put more back into the earth than systems using conventional industrial techniques - but they aren't rewarded for it. Thgis is why food grown through industrial agriculture, which doesn't pay the full price of its ecological misbehavior, appears cheaper at the supermarket checkout. What the hidden costs show is that this is not cheap food: It's cheat food. What is true for food is no less true for every other consumer item. Sustainably produced goods and services appear to cost more, because their cheaper equivalents are cutting corneres in the short run but generating long-run costs that we'll all have to bear.
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