Sustaining Our Food Supply

By:  Diane Regas

Sustainable food production is “a method of production using processes and systems that are non-polluting, conserve non-renewable energy and natural resources, are economically efficient, are safe for workers, communities and consumers, and do not compromise the needs of future generations”.

A New Way Of Farming

About 40 percent of the Earth’s non-ice, land surface is devoted to agriculture, and that’s how we use most freshwater, too. For many years, excess crop fertilizers have run off into streams and rivers, polluting drinking water and causing dead zones in lakes and oceans in the United States and elsewhere, which affects marine life.

As our footprint from food production continues to grow, there is a surprising new breakthrough making me feel optimistic. Major producers are changing how they grow and supply food, and they’re working with farmers to apply the best technologies to the problem.

In the past year, Campbell’s Soup joined Walmart, Smithfield Foods, General Mills and United Suppliers in a collaboration with Environmental Defense Fund to make fertilizer efficiency and soil health the norm in U.S. grain production. Our goal is to enroll 45 million acres in the program by 2020, and we’re already half-way there.

Farming techniques such as no-till and planting cover crops, meanwhile, increase a farm’s resiliency, which can boost yields and food production in the long-run.

This year, some of the world’s largest, international food companies also agreed to rid many of their brands of artificial colors and flavors, and we expect more companies to follow suit in coming years.

The Biggest Job Of All

The health of the environment and well-being of people who live on Earth are inextricably interlinked.

We cannot produce food for nearly 10 billion without taking into account how it will affect the environment. And we cannot continue to pollute the environment without considering how it will affect people who must eat.

That’s why food security is also an environmental issue.

But if we are truly committed to bringing healthy food for all, we’ll need to tackle the single largest threat to food security: climate change. With more extreme weather and food shortages on the horizon, this is work we can’t afford to put off.

Contact Us to learn more about sustaining our food supply