Helping Farmers Save Our Planet

In 2022, about 6% of the food sold in the United States was certified organic. When we buy food from sustainable farms, we help them grow.

A sustainable food system is a legacy we can grow for future generations.

Thomas Malthus predicted in 1798 that population will grow faster than agriculture, condemning hungry humanity to a “perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery.” Yet the rate of global starvation peaked in the 1870s and has been below ten starvation deaths per 100,000 people since the 1970s. The main reason we’ve been able to avoid global famines is the “Green Revolution” of the 1960s when farmers gained access to high-yield dwarf wheat and rice varieties. But just planting dwarf grain strains won’t keep our food production on pace with our population growth forever-as conscientious food consumers, we have an important job to do to help create a sustainable agricultural system that can satisfy global hunger.

In this action guide, we’ll explore how to support “regenerative” agriculture to overcome the dangerous limits of conventional methods. A step toward sustainable food is to understand which labeling terms are meaningful. When we make wise decisions, the money we spend to eat helps sustainable producers grow-and that brings us closer to the “wished-for goal” of a sustainable, well-fed world.

Help! How Can I Support Farmers Who Use Sustainable Methods?

Buy the food they produce! If you live in a community with a farmers market, that’s a great place to meet people who grow food for a living. Talk with your local farmers and support the ones who are superbly sustainable. If you cannot meet the people who grow your food, look for labels like “USDA Organic” to choose plant-based food produced in sustainable ways. Your money helps sustainable producers grow.

Help! Which Is Better for Our Planet: “Organic” or “All Natural”?

Assuming you’re comparing apples to apples (and not beef to bananas), food labeled “USDA organic” is almost certainly better for our planet than food labeled “all natural” but not organic. In the United States, “USDA Organic” is legally reserved for food produced through methods that meet the National Organic Program standards. The establishing law requires food producers to have an “organic plan” that explains how they will “foster soil fertility, primarily through the management of the organic content of the soil through proper tillage, crop rotation, and manuring.”

The organic content of soil comes from living organisms; evidence shows that the most productive agricultural soils have about 3.75% organic matter by weight. Topsoil erosion typically lowers soil productivity because subsoil (what’s exposed after topsoil has been removed) has less organic content. Building soil organic content can take decades, while topsoil erosion can occur in seconds during floods or windstorms, especially if soils are disturbed by too much plowing (as occurred during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s).

The USDA Organic label has four levels, depending on the ingredients in the food:

If all ingredients are organic, this label can appear on the front of the packaging.

This label can appear on the front of a food package with up to 5% non-organic ingredients, but none of the ingredients can be produced by genetic modification, irradiation, or application of sewage sludge.

If fewer than 95% of the ingredients are organic, the organic seal may not be displayed, but this message may appear on the front of the package if at least 70% of the ingredients are organic.

With fewer than 70% organic ingredients, no organic claim may be made on the front of food packaging, but organic items can be noted in the back ingredient panel.

Food labeled “All Natural” can be produced in any manner, including methods that deplete soil organic content, destroy topsoil, overdraw aquifers, pollute waterways, modify genomes, irradiate produce, or apply sewage sludge to cropland. The term “All Natural” may suggest that food does not contain artificial colors or flavors made from synthetic food-safe chemicals, but it does not say how the food was produced.

Help! Which Has a Bigger Impact: Buying Less Meat or Buying More Organic?

Let’s phrase that question to be even more extreme: is it better for our planet to buy a meat substitute like jackfruit or certified organic beef? (In case you’re not familiar with it, jackfruit is a tropical fruit that people often use in barbecue recipes.)

According to CarbonCloud, producing one kilogram of jackfruit in Asia emits about one and a half (1.5) kilograms of greenhouse gas pollution, with 95% of those emissions due to agricultural practices of growing and harvesting the fruit, 4% due to transport, and 1% due to processing. The carbon footprint of a kilogram of beef from New Zealand, one of the most efficient meat-producing countries in the world, is about twenty-two (22) kilograms of greenhouse gas pollution. Transportation is a small fraction of emissions: researchers concluded that exporting meat from New Zealand to other countries would have a total carbon footprint “lower or very similar to domestically-produced red meat in those nations.”

So, to answer the question, eating jackfruit is for our planet than eating even the best beef on Earth in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

Even if it has to be shipped thousands of miles, producing a dozen bowls of tropical jackfruit still emits fewer greenhouse gasses than producing a single beefsteak.

Buying less meat is far more important than buying organic meat. If you have to buy meat, then it’s a good idea to buy organic meat. But we do a bigger favor for our planet finding ways to buy less meat than shopping for organic meat. The less meat we demand, the less meat our agricultural system must produce and the more grains, fruits, and vegetables it can deliver to hungry people.

No matter how people grow beef, it is far worse for our planet than almost any other type of food they could produce. To help farmers save our planet, one of the best things we can do is buy from farmers who are using sustainable methods to grow plants for us to eat. Spending our money on a plant-based diet and then choosing plant-based ingredients that are certified organic helps food producers choose more sustainable ways to feed us.

What’s Still Ahead on the Pathway…

Last year, we explored the pathway to sustainable movement, energy, and goods. Now, we’re exploring the pathway to sustainable food to transition from the standard American diet to a healthier plant-centered diet and from industrial to regenerative agriculture. Stay with us on the journey to sustainability as we take action to positively impact the world.

References and Further Reading

• An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus
• Famines, Our World in Data
• The Green Revolution: Norman Borlaug and the Race to Fight Global Hunger, PBS.org
• Sustainable Eating in Every Season, Fred Horch
• National Organic Program, United States Department of Agriculture
• Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, GovInfo.gov
• Five Benefits of Soil Organic Matter, AgriSight
• How Does Soil Erosion Affect Crop Productivity & How Do You Fight It?, Holganix
• Dust Bowl, History.com
• Recipe: Jamaican Jerk Jack, Cleveland Clinic
• Jackfruit flesh. Asia, CarbonCloud | ClimateHub
• New Zealand beef and lamb among the most carbon-efficient in world, beef + lamb New Zealand
• Environmental Impacts of Food Production, Our World in Data

Originally published at https://sustainablepractice.substack.com.