Food Sustainability

Consumers have become increasingly detached from their food as America’s food system grows larger and continues to ruin the environment. The main problem is that most consumers do not know how their consumption habits affect the ecosystem around them. Nor do they know about how their food was produced. Information about how and where the food is being produced and wasted is essential, so people can shop responsibly. Short of legislation, Americans make choices at the grocery store. It is essential for all Americans to cast in a vote with their dollars to change the way that food is produced in the United States resulting in more sustainable food being more accessible in the aisles of the grocery store for all Americans.

Farmers have to consider the food quality checks. Farmers are aware of that if fruits or vegetables are not in a perfect shape supermarkets are not going to buy them, so farmers just throw away imperfect fruits and vegetables. Royte who is a nature writer, in her article “Eat Ugly!” she explained, “A lot of food sellers think no one will buy freaky-looking food. So they toss it before trying to sell it. Each year, 1.3 billion metric tons of food gets wasted in this way” (Royte). According to Richard Schiffman gave a solution for this problem in his article “What a Waste!” by giving the example of “Andronico's Community Markets in California” who sell imperfect looking fruits and vegetables to a very low price (Schiffman). This will help Famers and they don’t need to throw away the ugly looking products. The other reason food being wasted in fields by farmers is that they have to make sure that they have a steady supply of products for supermarkets (Matt and Peek). They purposed a solution for this problem, “With better food labeling—for example, using a spoils-on date rather than a sell-by date markets could keep their stock longer and ease demand on farmers” (Matt and Peek). The government should bring stricter policies to decrease food waste in fields and supermarkets can play an important role to reduce food waste

The world continues to face a wide-scale food crisis. The effects of this crisis reach from the farmers who grow and raise the food to the very system of laws that are in place to govern the system itself. Food giants are reaching deep into their pockets for lobbying in order to take advantage of both the producers and the consumer all in the name of profit. Moreover, farmers are being driven to suicide, and the ecosystem’s livelihood is treading a fine line. Both Michael Pollan and Raj Patel bring to light these problems and offer suggestions to help lessen their severity. Though there are many philosophies on which they both agree, they both have their own ideas to fight back. Pollan seeks to challenge the consumer as an individual while

About fifty million Americans are not certain when their next meal will be and in a society filled with food insecurities, the fact there this so much food waste is perplexing (King, 2015). Around the world, about two billion tons of food is wasted through production, transportation, distribution and retail, and post consumer (Glickman 2013). This amount of food

Trying to eat healthy food nowadays is expensive. Many people choose the cheaper food instead of purchasing organic food. In the video “What’s wrong with our food system”, Birke Baehr discusses how the industrial farms are producing the food in a rapid way but making the food to cause long-run diseases. He has found a sustainable way for people to get healthy organic local food. Birke encourages everyone to purchase their food at their local farm which have no chemicals. Furthermore, the article “Fixing Our Broken Food System: The Plate of the Union Initiative” explains how the food system is broken because the food that people can afford are from the industrial farms. It emphasis to fix this problem, people need to support the farmers by investing in research for sustainable

The Brundtland report defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” From early times, philosophers, such as Thomas Malthus, believed humanity could not be sustained. Malthus believed mankind would reach their carrying capacity, specifically with regards to food. Yet, this notion changed in subsequent years, thanks in part to the green revolution. This revolution helped increase crop yields due to new fertilizers, pesticides, etc. While there became more food available, sustainability, with regards to producing food in an environmentally friendly way, ran into some difficulties. While the Brundtland commission defined sustainability, there are three components that must be integrated for the well-being of all—social, environmental, and economic. Each component of sustainability must be looked at critically when considering the sustainable use of any resource. While many simply worried about having enough food available in the world, one must think of food sustainability with regards to environmental, economic, and social implications. As follows, the importance of food sustainability will be discussed, along with the attempts to measure food sustainability.

From farm to table getting our food and produce to the consumer is a tricky task. Even with all the planning millions of food ends up wasted a year. Many steps are already taken to reduce the amount of food being wasted but are they enough? In America alone 200 to 250 pounds is wasted per person per year! According the world resources institute “32 percent of the world’s food was never consumed in 2009”.

Food is necessary for humans to be able to survive, but food nowaday is not being sustainable. There are too many harmful chemicals in them and some foods now are not even made out of real foods. Food is something that needs to be sustainable because humans have to consume it, and when it is not properly treated the harm goes to those who consume it. Food is being hindered by soil erosion, water pollution, the use of pesticides and herbicides, etc. The use of herbicide and pesticide is damaging to crops because these chemicals stay on crops and go to the bodies of those which consume them, and they don’t even know about these chemicals. There is a lot of propaganda in the pro side of the argument because they give a positive view but that

From the moment in time which marked the emergence of the human race, food has been an integral part of society. It has served as more than just sustenance aiding in the formation of cultures, civilizations, and technologies. However as the human mind evolved, so too did views on the value of food. The degradation of these views has resulted in between 1.3 and 2.2 billion tons of food being wasted globally each year (Finn et al. 2). Most Americans are guilty of having to thrown away a forgotten piece of food that has spoiled, but the problem is far bigger than that. Annually thirty-four million tons of food waste finds its way into American landfills (Buzby et al. 2). Unfortunately a majority of American citizens are ignorant to this fact. These citizens perceive the food they seen thrown away as the lost of a few dollar at the most and therefore not a serious problem. However, a large number of the United States’ social, economic, and environmental issues which need to be understood and addressed can be attributed to food waste.

Sustainable agriculture is the idea to agriculture that prioritize in fabricating food in a manner that does not demean nature and does not threaten human or animal 's health. Sustainable agriculture provides high quality produce without diminishing resources and natural systems that productivity rely on. A study by the University of Michigan, compared data from one hundred studies of sustainable and conventional agriculture, concluded that a universal transformation to sustainable agriculture could in fact expand international food production to approximately fifty

There are billions of people struggling every day to have enough to eat, and billions of tons of food being tossed in the garbage, food waste is gaining increasing awareness as a serious environmental and economic issue. Research shows that about 60 million metric tons of food is wasted a year in the United States, with an estimated value of $162 billion. About 32 million tons of it end up in landfills, at a cost of about $1.5 billion a year to local government this economic crisis is worldwide! My research estimates that a third of all the food produced in the world is never consumed, and the total cost of that food waste could be as high as $400 billion a year. The food discarded by retailers and consumers in the most developed countries would be more than enough to feed all of the world’s hungry people, but it is not just those countries that have problems with food waste, it is also an issue in African countries like South Africa. The problem is expected to grow worse as the world’s population increases, unless actions are taken to reduce the waste. Food waste is not only a social cost, but it contributes to growing environmental problems like global warming, experts say, with the production of food consuming vast quantities of water, fertilizer and land. The fuel that is burned to process, refrigerate and transport it also adds to the environmental cost. Most food waste is thrown away in landfills, where it decomposes and emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

As mentioned in Wiskerke’s Urban Food Systems, there are currently enough food to feed 10 billion people at the global scale, and yet 40% of it went to disposal due to harvest and postharvest losses (which includes industrial, commercial, and household wastes). This opens up a larger issues of over purchasing, supermarket’s quality control (in which products that do not match the company’s standard will get thrown away instead of being sold at the store), over production of food at commercial level, and the food expiry date system that cause more waste than safety. These are issues that many

The food industry has a large impact on individuals and will affect wider communities in the future. The rush of today’s society has pushed food production to become more commercialized with prepackaged/premade based foods. For numerous reasons such as time, work and costs of living, people are wanting meals that are cheap, fast, easy and don’t require much effort. This is due to many obligations and priorities in life that are put above

Society must educate itself on what type of food is healthy such as fresh or fresh frozen vegetables, lean meats, whole grains and fruits. Parents should take the time to explain what these are and why they are important, educating themselves if necessary. Families can also extend this education to a hands-on experience but starting a small vegetable garden which produces some of the vegetables they eat. Author and farmer, Sharon Astyk, and sustainable systems land planner, Aaron Newton, argue that people need to take back the control of the food selection and prices by growing their own or purchasing directly from local farmers. In their article, “The Rich Get Richer: the Poor Go Hungry”, Astyk and Newton (2015) write, “When we grow our own food, or buy it directly from local farmers, we take power away from multinationals” (p.518). I agree that society should become more involved and self-sustaining pertaining to food to retain independence from companies that are loyal to shareholders. This education will provide the current and future generations necessary resources to make improved food choices, thereby reducing the obesity and diabetes epidemics gripping our nation.

In America, we are constantly surrounded by abundance. Food is a prevalent waste item in the United States. Most people do not think about the resources it took to produce, transport, and prepare the food they throw away. Our food waste is not actually just trash; it is the key to human survival. Ordinary consumers can change the future with one small action: to stop wasting food. Actions at the individual level can decrease food waste and feed those in need. Twenty five percent of purchased food is thrown away. (TED) Often this is because food has spoiled, but it can be for other reasons such as oversupply, misread labels, or individual consumer shopping and eating habits. http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf