Global food systems need temporally imagined transformation. The cost of National food systems are influenced by the costs of food production incurred by farms and the governments. The hidden costs are borne by farms in the quest for enhancing productivity and production of crop commodities. Major unaccounted hidden costs are associated with natural resource management of farms. Over many years / decades farms need replenishments and rejuvenation. The costs for sustaining farm productivity of various integrated farming systems lead to many hidden costs that get accrued in farm economy. Cumulative hidden costs, computed over past few decades when intensive farming enabled stabilised global food systems. Challenges to farms arising out of the intense fight against vagaries of weather due to climate change have accumulated hidden costs over decades. Computing this hidden costs need AI supported simulation models to pinpoint such adverse effects on farms at given time periods in history. Based on the contextual GDP of the nations where such episodes are rampantly disturbing farming practices hidden costs have to be worked out. Compounding of decade-to-decade hidden costs need to be the basis for designing policies that would shock absorb farms from disastrous economic weakening.
One of the major farm input in the context of hidden cost is energy. Electricity, animal energy and farm machinery energy have been adversely affected by several external costs. Their compounded factorisation has to be done in order to arrive at the temporal hidden costs.
In effect it can be concluded that National Food Systems and in turn Global Food systems have the adverse impact from hidden costs that get cascaded over time along the inflationary pressures.
Dr. Rajendran TP