Food & Agriculture
Food accounts for 26 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, nearly half of food is wasted, and it's estimated that much of the 125-160 billion pounds of the annually wasted food is safe to eat. Food waste ends up wasting nearly a quarter of our water supply in the form of uneaten food or over $172 billion in wasted water. Wasting food is bad for the environment and troubling since 12 percent of American households are food insecure. Food can be wasted for a various reasons: bad weather, processing problems, overproduction and unstable markets cause food loss long before it arrives in a grocery store, while overbuying, poor planning and confusion over labels and safety contribute to food waste at stores and in homes. Our largely monoculture-based food system came about in the early 1900s with the Farm Bill incentivizing this practice. With monoculture or monocropping, farmers grow one commodity crop repeatedly on the same plot of land in order to mass produce these highly utilized crops. And with the Green Revolution decades later, the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, high-yielding crop varieties, and farm equipment mechanization became widespread as well. The popularity of these practices together have contributed to desertification and the destruction of microbial diversity within the soil. When soil health is degraded, the health of our environment is degraded, as it creates a weakened, polluted soil system prone to infertile land, superbugs, weeds, and degradation of waterways and local ecosystems. Many of these crops--like corn and soy--are not even feeding humans for the most part, but instead feeding mass amounts of animals for meat production in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), contributing to climate change by producing 14.5% of total GHG emissions globally per year. To ensure the sustainability of earth, land management practices that center soil and climate health must be prioritized, specifically by encouraging local, regenerative food systems. Currently, communities across the U.S. are trying to course correct through regenerative farming, supporting local farmers and reducing consumption of fossil fuels by purchasing seasonal foods (like at farmers markets), and avoiding environmentally destructive animal products and fish farms. Along with transitioning our eating habits to support a local, regenerative food system, it's important to look at the ways in which we can dine more sustainably. More and more restaurants and quick service food establishments are integrating sustainability through their operations. Especially on the west coast and east coast, we're seeing more farm to table restaurants, plant-based menus, fully plant-based restaurants, and food establishments reducing waste through transitioning to-go ware to compostable options. Supporting these establishments that are trying to make an impact is essential in creating a more sustainable food economy and encouraging other restaurants to likewise integrating sustainability into their operations and business model.
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