Sustainable Sustenance Series I: Eat for the Planet

By Hillary V.

Let’s talk food! Food has the ability to bring people together, transform your mood, and literally sustain life. Unfortunately, the way we currently grow, distribute, and consume food is not sustainable for the health of the planet or for ourselves. Over the next three weeks, we will tackle how to eat sustainably, including challenging the biggest myths and hurdles people face when trying to change eating habits. But first things first! Our current food system is unsustainable because of the ways we ….

Grow food 

Our current system of industrial agriculture consists of growing one kind of crop on a massive scale, which depletes soil of crucial nutrients and requires a ton of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. These fertilizers damage air and water quality. Moreover, demand for industrial agriculture results in massive deforestation – agriculture is estimated to cause about 80% of all deforestation worldwide. And, if you are an animal lover, the picture is even more dire. Factory farms keep animals in almost unimaginably horrific conditions, and 99% of all animals consumed for food in the world are raised on factory farms.

In the U.S. alone, more than 9.8 billion land animals are raised on factory farms every year.

Humane Society

Because of the large concentration of animals that emit greenhouse gases like methane, animal agriculture and deforestation makes up approximately 24% of greenhouse gases emissions worldwide, second only to electricity and heat production as a contributor to global climate change. 

Transport food

The food in our grocery stores and restaurants undergoes an incredibly long, carbon intensive process to get to us! No matter where you live, much of the food you buy in your local grocery store has likely traveled thousands of miles to get to you. We don’t think twice about which foods are in season because they are generally all available, all the time! However, studies estimate the average meal in the United States travels about 1,500 miles from the farm where it is produced to the plate where it is eaten. Transportation is a huge contributor to climate change, so buying products from around the globe undermines our goals of sustainability.

Waste food

Sustainable Saplings Extraordinaire Ashley V. covered food waste in her article Food for Thought. I won’t repeat her excellent points here, but keep in mind that WE WASTE FOOD! A LOT of it! So much so that Project Drawdown ranks food waste reduction as the third most important solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Now that we have sufficiently bummed you out, it’s time to remind you that we can change! The above issues also represent huge opportunities for emissions reduction.  We can transform the way that we view, treat and consume our food. Over the next three weeks, we will explain common myths around eating sustainably, provide practical advice, and challenge you to rethink your relationship to food and the planet.

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1 – See Drivers of Deforestation and Forest Degradation by Gabrielle Kissinger and Martin Herold, funded by the British and Norwegian governments.

2 – See the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data website.

3 – We acknowledge, however, that refraining from eating animal products has a greater impact on greenhouse gas emissions than eating locally. See Peter Newton’s TedXTalk here on eating and climate change.