This thought-provoking, accessible book examines the dominant food regime on its own terms, by asking whether we can afford cheap food and by exploring what exactly cheap food affords us. The book is essential reading for those interested in critical food studies, food and agriculture and a sustainable and socially just food system.

1. Introduction 2. Cheap Food, Globalization, and Development 3. Cheap Food and Conflict 4. Cheap Food, Hunger, Obesity, and Health 5. Cheap Meat 6. Cheap Food and the Environment 7. Cheap Food… But at What Price? 8. Cheap Food, Community, and Culture 9. Cheap Food: Who Wins, Who Acts, and Why? 10. Making Food Affordable

"Michael Carolan is one of the world’s leading scholars in the political economy of food and farming. In this book he harnesses his considerable skills as a social scientist and public intellectual to argue that the global food system is not only based upon questionable and shaky, biological, economic and social foundations, but also fails to deliver what it promises – nutritional, healthy and affordable food for a burgeoning world population. Professor Carolan presents a comprehensive and compelling analysis of the forces shaping current food and farming trajectories, the winners and losers in the food system, the options available to those wanting to challenge and, ultimately, to overhaul today’s unsustainable global foodscape." – Geoffrey Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Queensland, Australia"A very readable romp through the breadth and depth of externalities generated by capitalism’s demand for cheap food." – Raj Patel, Research Professor, Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, US, and author of Stuffed and Starved: From Farm to Fork: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System"With food continuing to comprise a declining share of household expenditure in rich and middle-income countries, a trend heralded by proponents as a vindication of the modern food system, Carolan provides a necessary wake-up call alerting us to the widely accumulating problems that conventional price calculations ignore. Almost encyclopaedic in range yet entirely conversational in tone, this book strikes just the right note in exploring how fundamentally flawed our ‘cheap food’ system is. Set to become a food student’s bible!" – Colin Sage, author of Environment and Food (2012), University College Cork, Republic of Ireland