2778 Unfair deal: Farming remains in distress because to provide cheap food, the right price is denied to growers. PTI Devinder Sharma Food & Agriculture Specialist IN a recent BBC Radio broadcast, Prince Charles said: “How we produce food has a direct impact on the earth’s capacity to sustain us, which has a direct impact on human health and economic prosperity.” The clamour for producing cheap food, which is at the very foundation of the mad race towards an unfettered economic growth, is actually based on externalising the ‘hidden costs’ of modern industrial farming. The focus on producing surplus and cheap food threatens the very survival of the country’s smaller farms, Prince Charles said, adding that if these small farms disappear, “it will rip the heart out of the British countryside.” The warning has been sounded at a time when Statista, a global business data platform, estimates the total number of employed and self-employed farmers in the UK to have come down drastically to a mere 1,07,000 in 2020.