Food and Nutrition
Sustainable Foods - The Next Best Buy
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Jun 22, 2008 - 6:16:21 PM

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Sustainable agriculture -- a term equated with organic farming less than a decade ago, may be the answer to the world’s future food challenge. Sustainable agriculture is neither energy-intensive industrialized farming, nor organic farming, but more a hybrid of the two that is highly productive and does not damage the environment.

Drawing on both industrial and organic farming methods, sustainable agriculture incorporates precision farming methods – super-efficient energy usage, water conservation, biological pest control, genetic modifications for qualities that improve nutritional value and drought resistance, and cultured meat – steak in a Petri dish. In the future organic products will become a subset of sustainable agriculture.

Today, with demand for food outstripping supply, food prices soaring, and food riots beginning to erupt around the world, sustainable agriculture may be the improvement in productivity that is urgently needed. This system of farming addresses many of the concerns of today’s consumers who are asking those who grow and produce our foods to be good stewards of the Earth. We want some assurance that the world’s resources are not being depleted so that we can eat. But, at the same time we want affordable, safe and healthy foods.

Consumers are interested foremost in the safety of their food. Imported foods are falling out of favor because of the energy wasted in transporting food thousands of miles and the concerns that foreign countries may not be using stringent controls to assure the safety of food they export. Fifteen percent of all food eaten in the US is imported. Eighty percent of the fish and seafood we eat is imported. Yet, the FDA physically inspects less than 1% of the more than 9 million imported food entries yearly. Eating locally is a trend that is gaining support and sustainable agriculture can help farmers meet this growing demand by yielding bigger crops. Recent research showed that the average shopper is willing to pay more for locally grown and produced foods.

To produce more food in an ecologically friendly system, there is no single best approach. Organic farming is one eco-friendly system. But, to feed the world’s population and not destroy the planet in the process we need to apply a spectrum of farming practices geared to different ecosystems, climates, soils and crops to maximize production. Sustainable agriculture does just that, moving away from monocultures toward more diverse crop and livestock systems.

Advanced sustainable agriculture uses many of the standard applications of organic farming such as crop rotation, cover crops to reduce the need for fertilizer, and biological-control techniques in place of pesticides. But it goes further, using new super-efficient, precision agricultural tools and cutting edge technology. For example, drip irrigation systems linked to soil sensors to irrigate only when and where needed; satellite information and computer programs designed to detect evidence of pest damage; and wind turbines and other renewable energy technologies.

Green biotechnology and genetic modification will be used to make crops more resistant to environmental impacts. Solar greenhouses can extend local growing seasons and vertical fields, stacked like a parking garage can increase acreage.

The combination of rising food costs and scientific progress may lead to the production of novel forms of protein. Many scientists believe that within a few decades we will be producing in vitro meat (steak grown in a Petri dish). According to New Harvest, a group dedicated to advancing meat substitutes, cultured meat has the potential to be a safer, less polluting, and more humane substitute for conventional meat. Fat content can be easily controlled, foodborne disease significantly reduced, and inedible animal structures won’t be grown. Initially cultured meat would be used for ground meat, sausage and chicken nuggets. By replacing a portion of total meat production with cultured meat products, normal livestock production could continue without placing unsustainable demands on land, water, and environmental resources.

Sustainably produced foods will cut through the current polarization between industrial agriculture and organic farming. It might seem like we are entering a brave new world, but it is simply change, and nothing is more constant in our lives than change.

Source: A White Paper Food 2028: Key Forecasts, by the Institute for Alternative Futures, sponsored by Fleishman-Hillard, June 2008.

© NRH Nutrition Consultants, Inc.
Jo-Ann Heslin, MA, RD, CDN is a registered dietitian and the author of the nutrition counter series for Pocket Books with 12 current titles and sales in excess of 6 million books. The books are widely available at your local or on-line bookseller.
Current titles include:
The Healthy Wholefoods Counter, 2008
The Cholesterol Counter, 7th Ed., 2008
The Diabetes Carbohydrate and Calorie Counter, 3rd Ed., 2007
The Calorie Counter, 4th Ed., 2007
The Compete Food Counter, 2nd Ed., 2006
For more information on Jo-Ann and her books, go to www.TheNutritionExperts.com.

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