Agriculture and the ability to feed oneself comprises the fundamental component of sustaining human life on earth, providing nutrition (and therefore, existence), stability and security. As a growing world population consumes an increasing proportion of land and water resources, questions arise over how we as a global population can continue to feed ourselves in a way that is both socially and economically equitable, without limiting future generations ability to feed themselves or harming others in the procurement of our own food and water supply. Before beginning to address sustainability in agriculture, it is important to conceptualize the impact of our current agriculture system and our role within it.
Hunger and drought are two global problems that have persisted throughout history, leaving in their wake conflict and crime and a trail of harmed lives and lost productivity. As citizens in a developed country, we often do not make the connection between our food consumption and its impact on the global community. Questions of social justice and access to food for all mankind only begin to scratch the surface of a complex agricultural system that influences global stability to such a large extent. As a populace we often hear of impacts of hunger or drought on global trade, foreign aid, militaristic uprisings and interventions and refugees fleeing disaster stricken areas. Industrial agriculture, in part via the Green Revolution’s introduction of technologies such as chemical pesticides, large scale irrigation projects, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, has certainly succeeded in growing more food worldwide. While global figures show the abundance of food, the problem of hunger remains a desperate reality for many, including the more than 800 million people that remain continuously hungry and are unable to meet their most basic nutritional requirements. Without even considering the associated environmental and economic impacts of our industrial agriculture system, the statistic showing that hunger, malnutrition, and their associated causes claim 25,000 lives every day makes it clear that the current system is not only unsustainable, it is morally and socially indefensible given the capabilities of mankind.
Closer to home, a regional ability to produce our own food clearly impacts the local economy and ensures a safe and adequate food supply in the case of future global shortages or outbreaks. As our increasingly industrialized and globalized food system collects ingredients from across the world into a processed, packaged good, a local food system is being undermined and a community’s ability to feed itself is lost. As obesity and diet-related health problems continue to wreck havoc on our health systems, it is perhaps time to question why as consumers we leave the social justice, food safety, human health, and environmental impacts of our food production to be guided completely by a profit-seeking agribusiness and food manufacturing industries.
Each dollar spent on food is indeed a vote of support toward either a local farm economy or a corporate agribusiness. Globalization of our food system does not just hurt small-scale US farmers. Approximately 40% of global food production is actually by small, self-reliant farmers. As corporate farms and agribusinesses span the globe seeking lowest cost production via chemical and machine intensive farming, they are severely limiting developing countries ability to feed themselves. In developing countries—where 75% of the world’s 1.2 billion extremely poor live in rural areas—investment and public funding is focused not on feeding the region’s hungry with culturally or regionally appropriate foods, but on agribusiness crops for export (predominately to the US). The shift toward this export economy gained traction due in part to structural adjustment programs, conditions for getting new loans from the IMF or World Bank . Instead of promoting food for local communities, it encourages corporate monoculture to grow a single crop over thousands of acres, typically high profit cash crops such as flowers, beef, sugar, coffee, cotton, or soybeans for export to already well-fed countries, never to make it near the shelves of the community it was grown in and unavailable to the cash-poor subsistence farmers and landless rural families which now work the corporate farms. The policies associated with these adjustment programs, including agricultural, anti-land reform and food trade, have been a major player in the urbanization of the South (developing countries), extreme growth of megacities and urban poverty and slums, and migration to Northern (developed) countries. The environmental issues associated with this transformation brings the impact of agricultural policy far beyond the reaches of the farm and field. When small farms in the US are paved over for subdivisions and shopping malls, consumers lose not just another fresh source of agricultural diversity and stability in our food system, we lose an option to the corporate industrial agriculture system that is on a daily basis undermining the Third World’s ability to feed themselves and the health of our global environment.
An overview of our current agricultural practices are far from complete without a systematic look at the environmental and economic impacts of the system. The steady move toward large scale farms has had a tremendous impact on ecosystem health, including water supply and quality, air quality, wildlife habitat, soil erosion and degradation, and deforestation. Our current system is heavily dependent on non-renewable energy, especially petroleum, and in the US the average food typically travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate, as much as 25 percent farther than in 1980. Only about 10% of the fossil fuel energy used in the world’s food system is used in production; the other 90% goes into packaging, transportation, and marketing.
Whether you are concerned with your own health, the well-being of your community or across the world, or our local and global environment, agriculture deserves your attention and local sustainable agriculture deserves your support!
There are many ways to get involved in sustainable agriculture and promoting community food security. You and your family could eat locally grown food, join a community supported agriculture program (CSA, shop at local farmers’ markets , dine a locally-owned restaurants, start a community garden, volunteer at a local farm, donate food to charitable pantries, encourage schools to serve healthier and fresher meals, talk to friends and family about food choices, or more locally get involved with a community-based organization (check out localharvest.org). In Nashville, check out the the Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee or Nashville Urban Harvest.
We hope to see you out at the farm or the market!
Sources: 1)World Agricultural Forum, http://www.worldagforum.org. July 21, 2007 2)According to the American Farmland Association, Tennessee is now tied with North Carolina & Florida for the largest amount of farmland that is lost each year.
Sarah with one of our favorite customers!
