Moral dilemmas in food provisioning: Inflation, the claim for ‘just prices’ and for ‘fair wages’

Abstract

The cost of living we envision here stems from an interpretation of the ‘cost of living’ phrase which addresses (1) macro indicators of inflation, (2) the difference between farm gate price and consumer price as a cost to farmers that endangers their viability, and (3) how this cost transfers to the wages of workers and endangers their livelihood. Finally, (4) we wish to highlight that the energy that needs to be invested to assure social reproduction at the scale of individuals and households – workers and employers in agriculture – and at the scale of entire political communities such as the nation-state or the European Union, is translated into moral dilemmas that mediate and produce material results – in people’s bodies, in the environment, in political mobilizations of different kinds. The ‘cost of living’ here expands into the multiple and situated meanings of what it costs to live and the practices that they support.