(link to TIME article contributed by Elaine P.)
Summary and thoughts of the article:
- The environmental movement may face political blockades, but the healthy/sustainable food movement sure isn't! Because of food's direct relevance to people's personal tastes and health, it has a lot more traction with people than the distant issues of environmentalism that many see as making people give up their quality of lives. In fact, the food revolution has gained in popularity so drastically that it may actually be a two-birds-one-stone solution, solving both environmental and food issues!
- This is actually not a far-fetched idea at all. One simple statistic: food production uses about 25-30% of all the world's energy. If we can make the food production process more efficient, and also waste less with more streamlined supply-chain mechanisms, then we'll have made a huge contribution to solving the world's environmental issues as well. Not to mention all the secondary benefits of healthy food which can also improve societal sustainability (i.e. more veggies in diet --> healthier lives --> less obesity --> less demand for costly healthcare services --> less demand for the energy, the plastic, and all the other resources that go into healthcare services).
- Everything's connected in this world...oftentimes that's a bad thing (bad positive feedback loops and such), but sometimes such interrelationships work out in our favor!!
From Yan Yu
"If the environmental movement is dead, then I say, 'Long live the food movement." - Brian Halweil, TED
ReplyDeleteSome of the food movement I can agree with, eating heathier etc etc. But the push for organic foods and against genetic modification is a step in the wrong direction. The point of GM is to create food that has more nutrients, better survivability and requires less resources and land to produce. Organic farms are the exact opposite, and require much higher resources to produce the same amount of raw food. For example, to produce the nitrogen nutrients we need each year organically instead of synthetically, we would need some 5 billion more heads of cattle [Dr. Norman Borlaug, April 2000]. This is a huge investment in resources and arable land. And we're talking about a world where land and available food is already at a premium. Even assuming an ideal year with no droughts or floods, how can we support a population of 6.77 billion people with organic farming techniques? What about places that constantly get hit by droughts or floods?
ReplyDeleteSame thing with pesticides, organic/natural pesticides may require much larger doses while being less selective with their targets [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0011250]. Why would we voluntarily use a chemical that will do more indiscriminate damage if we have an alternative? Just because of this vague idea that "natural" is better than "synthetic"?
So anyway, my answer to your question: the food movement, particularly the organic food movement, is acting against environmentalism and its green movement.
Thanks for the comment, Eric!! definitely some great points brought up!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the genetic modification of foods is one solution we can't discount. I also agree with you that organic food is often not as good as its hyped up to be (no proven improvement in nutritional value, for instance).
To further show that the organic food movement is often contradictory to the environmental movement, one of the biggest destructors of ecosystems is land use for agriculture, and to produce similar yields of crops, organic farming takes up more land than intensive modern-farming. Organic food also requires certification, which is extremely costly and creates equity issues in food production.
However, fortunately, the "organic food movement" is NOT the same thing as the "sustainable food movement". The former can be thought of as a very, very small subset of the latter.
For one thing, when the "sustainable food movement" speaks of natural pesticides, it does NOT mean the "organic pesticides" quoted in the article you linked. Instead, it means integrating specific insects into the farm, as well as making the farmland plant-life more ecologically diverse, both of which have been shown to reduce chemical pesticide use and reduce the problem of pests. (There are insects, like ladybugs, that specifically target pests without damaging plant life. And increasing plant biodiversity means that pests evolved to feast on one particular type of crop will have a harder time getting a foothold in the field. Biological systems have a way of sorting themselves out :)
The Sustainable food Movement also includes many other innovations to the way food is produced, alongside "natural pest control".
The Community Supported Agriculture programs mentioned in the article is a way to improve land-use: using unused city land to grow vegetables in a sustainable way (the veggies are local, reducing transportation costs; veggies are in season, reducing costs of production; and the veggies are fresh and picked when ripe, increasing health benefits to consumers). Making use of spare land means we don't have to destroy land that contains native wildlife to develop more industrial farms. I would argue this is extremely pro-environment.
Another great idea is that of a closed-loop system, in which the wastes from one farm process gets used as inputs to another process, which then generates waste that gets used for another process, etc (i.e. cow manure = feedstock for worms = compost for crops = unused plant matter serving as food for cows...etc etc)
For better examples check out:
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_barber_s_surprising_foie_gras_parable.html
Right now most of our farms are uni-process, and do not integrate the entire system. The Sustainable Food Movement plans to change this. Surely reducing waste in agriculture is in line with environmental interests?
I could go on, there are many such examples, but I would like to go to bed. :)
Basically, you're bang on in that the "organic food movement" does hinder the environmental movement in many respects. (This ties back to the many inherent contradictions and tradeoffs when we're talking about anything to do with sustainability).
But there are many other, BIGGER aspects of the "sustainable food movement" as well, which are beneficial for the environment. So overall, I think this movement's benefits outweigh its costs, with regards to food, to human health, and to the environment.