7 Ways to Get Real About Sustainable Food

In an excellent essay called "Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008" in the March/April issue of Mother Jones magazine, writer Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil, tells us that something’s gotta give if we are to seriously feed the world’s people sustainably.

“Nearly everyone agrees that we need new methods that produce more higher-quality calories using fewer resources, such as water or energy, and accruing fewer ‘externals,’ such as pollution or unfair labor practices,” he writes. “Where the consensus fails is over what should replace the bad old industrial system. It's not that we lack enthusiasm — activist foodies represent one of the most potent market forces on the planet. Unfortunately, a lot of that conscientious buying power is directed toward conceptions of sustainable food that may be out of date.”

What we need if we want to really transform food systems on a large scale, he says, is new ways of thinking about what “sustainable” might mean. A “tendency to replace complexity with checklists is the hallmark of the alternative food sector,” he writes. “Today's federal requirements for organic food, for example, only hint at the richness of the original concept, which encouraged farmers to not only forgo chemical fertilizers but also replenish soils on-site, using livestock manure or crop rotations.”

We need to be more realistic and more flexible. As Roberts puts it: the “risks of pragmatism must be weighed against the risk of perfectionism.” In other words, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Here are seven ideas to consider on this front:

1. Encourage incremental progress instead of fixating on yes-or-no checkboxes. Roberts argues that the current approach to alternative food ways, such as organic or local, is too black and white. Regarding organic food, he writes, “suppose that instead of insisting that farmers forgo synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, as current organic regulations do, our goal was to dramatically reduce the need.” Supporting polyculture farming that mixes industrial and organic farming techniques in order to remain effective and competitive might be a better bet than only rewarding the chemical teetotalers.
2. Admit that it makes no sense for all people to go completely local. Certain things grow really well in certain places and not others. Not only that, but as the world’s population has urbanized, there are a lot of people in some places and not as many in others. The idea that we can feed all of the people packed into cities with the food grown in the surrounding countryside is a pipe dream. Not only that, but transportation does not account for a massive share of trucked food's greenhouse gas emissions. According to a 2008 study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, it reduces one’s carbon footprint more to forego red meat and dairy one day a week than to eat local all the time. Don't get me wrong; cutting down on transporting food is a good thing, but our energies might be better spent encouraging other changes, such as meat-light eating.
3. Make large-scale urban farmscapes a reality. With so much demand for food in urban centers, it only makes sense to find innovative ways to grow food where the people are. Vertical farms are promising options, though remarkably expensive to build in high-land-value urban areas. Another exciting possibility is the idea pioneered by Sky Vegetables, which aims to put farms on urban rooftops. According to Roberts, grocery stores across the country could host 32,500 acres of arable land (one Wal-Mart supercenter offers four acres).
4. Direct subsidies to better kinds of farming. Foodies rail against our current system of farm subsidies, and with good reason. The US government supports the worst forms of industrial agriculture that damage the health of both the Earth and us. But would we be so dismayed with subsidies if they went to shore up the kind of farming that encourages sustainability and health? If the government’ role is to look out for the common good, then supporting farms that produce food as sustainably as possible should be a priority.
5. Demand that government procurement standards take farming method into consideration. Another way the government can encourage positive changes in food production is by putting its own money into the game. As Roberts reminds us, “Federal agencies and food programs are among the biggest purchasers of food in the world.” Most often their dollars go to the lowest bidder, but if they had other criteria to follow — polyculture considerations, for example, or reduction of pesticides — we could be talking big support for better practices.
6. Reform health care. Farmers are self-employed, which leaves them the short end of the stick on healthcare. Roberts makes the ingenious argument that “one reason farmers prefer labor-saving monoculture is that it frees them to take an off-farm job, which for many is the only way to get health insurance. Thus, the simplest way to encourage sustainable farming might be offering a subsidy for affordable health care.” Would that be . . . wait for it . . . a public option? Yes, I think it would.
7. Develop affordable innovations for small farmers in developing countries. Making farmers around the world more efficient and thus more able to produce the food their communities need requires only basic innovations. The “base of the pyramid” population — as the international community has come to call the people that live on less than $2 a day —  are currently a largely untapped market, according to innovator-businessman Paul Polak. Creating simple products these people can afford will transform their productivity and allow the expansion of local agriculture in the developing world. One example of this type of simple innovation is the KickStart human-powered water pump.

All of these ideas point to the need for those of us thinking about sustainable food to broaden our perspectives. We need to consider the bigger picture and put all our arguments in the context of the world's realities. Perfection is unlikely. So can we get the good?

Photo courtesy of ~MVI~(in Bangkok 4 Climate Nego)'s on flickr