Are pesticides, irradiation, and genetically modified seeds just a sad necessity for feeding the world? On the contrary, these technologies represent short-term bandages to systemic problems in agriculture, and pose unknown—and often unresearched—risks to ecosystem integrity and human health. The Earth provides a perpetual bounty as long as we don’t destroy its self-renewing capacity with our appetites. Today, however, we are eating up the planet. Our global food system, with its resource-intensive production and distribution, is using almost half the planet’s ecological capacity and is slowly degrading our natural resource base. To assure our well-being, we must close the gap between human demand and ecological capacity. Sustainable food systems offer viable opportunities to shrink humanity’s food Footprint to a size the Earth can support.
Transforming agriculture will require an economy that corrects today’s price distortions and perverse incentives; phases out our addiction to fossil fuels; supports local economies; and pays farmers and farm workers a fair share of every food dollar. The beauty of a sustainable food system is its ability to generate benefits in numerous areas: health, biodiversity, ecological restoration, energy savings, aesthetic values, and economic justice. None of these benefits alone may outweigh the apparent short-term gains of the current destructive system. But the sum of these benefits will make society far better off and help to avoid the trap of increasing production at the expense of people and the planet. Support for sustainable food systems will let farmers become more than nameless raw material providers for a giant food manufacturing system. Sustainable agriculture gives a human face to food. We create relationships with the people who grow what we eat, as we work toward community food security and public education around our food supply.
Other countries have started to recognize this opportunity. For example, Germany’s government—responding to the wishes of consumers, family farmers and environmental groups—is aiming to have at least 20 percent of its farms be organic by 2010. The government is allocating hundreds of
millions of dollars in tax subsidies to help German farmers make the transition. The United States is also exploring new models. For instance, “green payments” to farmers who follow sustainable practices could begin to level the playing field and lead to increased adoption of sustainable agriculture.
Source:
EATING UP THE EARTH: HOW SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS SHRINK OUR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT
by Diana Deumling, Mathis Wackernagel, and Chad Monfreda.
AGRICULTURE FOOTPRINT BRIEF, JULY 2003 (attached)
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