Why Can’t We Grow Healthy Food For A Sustainable World?

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In the cute new Jerry Steinfeld Netflix film, Unfrosted, a character is flummoxed by the 1960s cereal marketing wars. He suggests that the Kellogg company consider a new direction. Let’s create a healthy, sugar-free breakfast option for children, he says. The others look at him, stunned, then break out in over-the-top, hysterical laughter.

Producing food today that is good for us is no laughing matter, but the need to be profitable holds back manufacturers from offering us wholesome choices. Are there ways to fix our damaged food system? We’re clearly immersed in a conundrum. Big Agriculture is responsible for most of the atmospheric carbon dioxide causing climate change. Their facilities are also threatened by it.

But will Big Agriculture agree to change the way that they’ve been producing food for decades?

Global climate change has had a significant impact on the way the world grows its food. Climate change introduces a suite of ominous factors, such as greenhouse gas emissions, elevated temperature, increased carbon dioxide concentrations, nitrous oxide and methane ozone depletion, and deforestation. All of these intensify environmental stresses on crops and can even deplete essential plant nutrition levels.

Food systems account for approximately 34% of global greenhouse gas emissions. We need to adopt effective, sustainable approaches to growing food that offers food for all. Did you know that the world currently makes enough food to deliver 3,000 calories to each person every day? The problem is that one-third of those calories and nourishment goes to waste. It’s possible to feed a population that will grow to 8.2 billion by 2050. To do so, however, means more than simply an increase food production. What’s needed is efficient distribution and viable sustainable growth goals.

Authors in the Harvard Business Review argue that “shared principles, proven best practices, bold yet pragmatic leadership” is the combination of approaches necessary to solve the big collective challenges within the world’s broken food system. It’s time to accept that norms around producing food are flawed and need to change. With the backdrop of the climate crisis, the current food system is a threat to our well-being on a whole-planet scale.

That’s easy to say, though, and difficult to implement. What can be done within Big Agriculture so that nutritional, environmentally responsible, and tasty food choices become the norm?

It starts with identifying and then solving the problems.

The Slow Food Foundation reminds us that “cheap labor, monoculture farming, and economies of scale” combine to undercut local food producers almost anywhere in the world. Government subsidies contribute to pricing inequities. Staple crops like wheat, rice, corn, and soy, as well as livestock production, lowers production costs. Small hold farmers can’t keep up.

Let’s use grains as an example. They’re calorie-dense and easy to store and ship. They don’t spoil quickly, like fruits or vegetables, so they’re great for global trade. However, what looks good on first glance is artificially reinforced: in major economies like the US, EU, and China, government subsidies skew the playing field, crowding out more diverse, climate-resilient crops.

What kind of change is needed to produce healthy, sustainable food, as the Slow Food Foundation suggests?

• Align trade policies with agroecology and justice.
• Help farmers transition to sustainable practices.
• Protect rural communities.
• Ensure that food production respects people and the planet.
• Focus on the local.
• Strengthen short supply chains so food is grown and sold closer to home.
• Bargain for fair prices for farmers.
• Reducing dependence on long, wasteful, and business-dominated trade routes.
• Making fresh, healthy food more accessible to all.

And we must not forget that our producing food today is messed up because we veered away from our roots — traditional, indigenous food growing practices have valuable answers, if we’ll only listen. The need to preserve biodiversity, particularly in the case of plants, necessitates the use of ethnobotanical knowledge.

How Can Scientific R&D Help To Grow Healthy Food To Sustain The World?

Science is ready to lend a hand to healthy, sustainable food production with research and technology. A little bit of creativity and innovation can help, too.

Clark University biologist Chandra Jack studies plant microbe interactions. Jack is curious about what happens when microbes influence traits — such as when a plant flowers or whether it can compete against neighboring vegetation. “Even if we can feed the world now, in 20 years we won‘t be able to unless we make some significant changes,” Jack says. By studying how microbe interactions affect plant traits, Jack hopes to contribute to the development of new, more sustainable ways to increase food production.

The upcoming food crisis has its roots in the 1950s. That’s when synthetic fertilizers were introduced so farmers could produce significantly more food. Now we know that synthetic fertilizers are environmentally and economically costly.

It’s going to take healthier soil to benefit people and the planet. “Researchers want to use microbes to replace synthetic fertilizers,” Jack says. “We know what they can do in the lab. We don’t know what they can do in the wild or the field.”

Final Thoughts On Healthy Food For The Future

Want to think about tomorrow’s food in new, fun ways? Then plan a trip to Berkeley and visit the Lawrence Hall of Science’s newest exhibit, the 4000-square foot “Future of Food.”

It’s amusing and a bit far out while also drawing upon culture, science, AI, and state-of-the-art biotechnology and bioengineering. Hands-on activities allow visitors to act like oysters and catch marine algae (green ping pong balls) with metal baskets, “feed” a burping cow, crawl through a tunnel to explore soil, or walk in a “forest” of super-sized bacon strips and learn how the real deal is being made from seaweed.

The science center’s team designed the exhibit in collaboration and conversation with more than 150 community partners, scientists, educators, food entrepreneurs, engineers, tech experts, youths from ARISE High School in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, and more. Ohlone land stewardship is a special highlight, along with the impact on the food industry of robotics, AI, gene-edited crops, climate change, issues related to sustainability and culture, and inequities such as “food deserts” connected to serious health and safety issues that endanger people and planet Earth.

This would be an interactive way to explore the dilemmas and possibilities inherent in providing healthy, sustainable food to the world. the Berkeley exhibit lets us in on ways that regenerative agriculture and regenerative food businesses have real potential to address the dual challenges of food sustainability and security — but in ways that seem approachable and inviting.