First things first, what I mean by sustainable food is actually environmental sustainability or, simply put, eco-friendly food. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about social sustainability, nor that it isn’t important. Quite the opposite. I’m just not a social expert and wouldn’t want to say anything wrong or misleading. So for this blog, I will focus on environmental aspects.
Why sustainable food matters
You might be wondering why sustainable food is getting its own section, while “sustainable lifestyle” covers pretty much all the rest. Well for a few reasons.
First of all, I love food, yes, I LOVE eating. But I don’t just mean that. Despite my love for actual food, I’ve been passionate about our food system and the importance of food in our lives for years. Food is one of the things that brings us constantly together. It’s present in our everyday lives and activities, part of some of our best times, and there when we struggle.
And while it brings us together and we love it for this, food is first and foremost essential to all living beings. Without it, we are nothing. Humans and any living beings require nutrients to grow, develop and simply live. It also influences our health, and therefore more than just living, how we live.
This leads me to the second reason. While it’s essential to our lives, our food system is also extremely impacting.
Did you know that our food system currently represents about 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and even up to 35% according to some studies? This is huge, isn’t it? Additionally, the world faces an exponentially growing population, which will lead to a significant increase in food consumption. With that in mind, sustainable food is going to be crucial to maintaining a safe space for current and future generations to thrive.
Now, the question is, why is our food not sustainable? Take a second to think about it, what comes to mind?
If you haven’t had the opportunity to learn a lot about the sustainability of the food system, you might be surprised by what I’m going to say next. Contrary to what many consumers think, when you buy food, the main impacts aren’t the packaging or transportation. In a study performed by Quantis in 2019, assessing the carbon footprint of food, these represent together as little as 3 to 5% of the total food system’s impact. Agriculture however represents on its own 87%.
Similarly, if you look at food companies’ emissions, packaging and logistics will usually represent between 10 and 20% of their global footprint. The impact is mostly driven by their raw materials.
No matter how we look at the data, the primary impact is agriculture. Now I’m not saying packaging or logistics are trivial. I’ll deep dive into these at various times in the blog, especially packaging. But when it comes to food, tackling these should never be at the expense of the product itself!
Let’s deep dive further to understand these major drivers.
The main drivers of food environmental impact
As I mentioned, there is one thing to remember when it comes to sustainable food. Agriculture. Overall, agriculture practices represent between 50 and 90% of finished products’ impact, no matter which product you are looking at.
Here are four major drivers of our food system’s impact. The order is not representative of their order of magnitude. They all have a significant overall impact and deserve to be addressed and looked at closely.
Deforestation
One of the first that is always on top of my mind is deforestation. Likely because I’ve been working and still do with food companies striving to tackle this.
What do I mean by deforestation? Deforestation happens when, as we grow more crops or breed more animals, we need more land . This leads farmers to look for new land and generally to cut down forests to replace them with what are often monocultures.
The problems with this are manifold. Forests store a huge amount of carbon and are a shelter to millions of species. Let’s take the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. It’s one of the richest biodiversity hubs on earth. More than 3 million species and 2,500 tree species (one-third of all tropical trees) live in that forest. But that is not all. The Amazon plays a critical role in maintaining our current carbon balance with its 2.1 million square miles. Called the “lungs of the planet”, it is estimated to produce up to 20% of our planet’s oxygen and store huge amounts of carbon.
To give you a sense of what I am referring to, between summer 2018 and 2019, the Amazon lost over 3,800 sq. miles of forest — an area equivalent to over 1.8 million football fields. And the main drivers for this deforestation are well known. 4 of them represent its vast majority: cattle, palm oil, wood, and soy (primarily used to feed livestock). On top of these four, you’ll find commodities like coffee, rubber, cocoa, and sugar, though to a lesser extent than the other 4.
Nowadays, the topic is pretty clear, we need all deforestation to stop today, and we need to reforest significantly in the years to come to overcome all the damages we caused.
Pesticides and fertilizers
Our current agricultural practices rely heavily on the use of pesticides and fertilizers. When looking back, actually for some good reasons. Pesticides, as well as fertilizers, have played a big role in increasing yield which was crucial in a time where so many were suffering from hunger. However, while farmers often perceive them this way, helping increase yield and therefore productivity, they come with many side effects. They aren’t good for our health, they are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions as well as harmful to our soils by depleting their nutrients and impacting their capacity to store carbon.
If we focus on the soil for a minute, we are currently transforming our rich and fertile soils into dust. You might not know this, but soil is a really important component of our lives. Soil breeds our plants, which help us breathe in return, feeds animals and plants that help feed us, stores carbon as well as filters water. 95% of our food comes from soil, without it, humans and most animal life can’t survive.
At our current pace, experts estimate that in 60 years, we won’t have any fertile soil left, this means we won’t be able to grow food anymore.
We are currently losing 30 soccer fields of soil per minute says Volkert Engelsman, an activist with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements. About a third of the world’s soil has already been degraded (FAO) and when you know that generating three centimeters of topsoil takes 1,000 years, we can’t afford to lose any more time.
That alone should be enough to help us realize the need to stop the use of fertilizers and pesticides.
Meat
This is one I’m sure you feel you hear about all the time, and granted, for good reasons. Now, while meat and any related products like dairy do represent a huge environmental impact, I’m going to bring a bit of nuance to this discussion. I will tackle this in more detail in articles focused on different meat, plant-based options, … but what you need to know is that no, the world doesn’t need everyone to become Vegan. A sustainable food system does include some meat.
Yes meat, and especially beef, is a huge driver of emissions. Why? Mainly for two reasons. First, the current size of cattle farms leads to significant deforestation. Second, cows fart something called methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas. Animal agriculture, including deforestation, represents in itself 50% of the overall food system impact, with cattle being the main driver.
So yes, we need two things: a drastic reduction in meat consumption and a significant change in practices to stop deforestation and regenerate our soils. Reducing these products’ consumption will help relieve the pressure to produce always more and therefore relieve pressure on the lands. At the same time, intensive agriculture that has moved away from traditional farming needs to change. Now, it’s important to remember that when farmers moved towards these more intensive practices, it was because of increased pressure from consumers and companies. So now, it’s up to us to put another type of pressure. One where we incentivize farmers to implement practices that will help grow animals in a much more sustainable way. This includes both environmental aspects and animal welfare ones.
However, we don’t need to completely eliminate all sorts of animal products from our eating habits to limit global warming. Animals have been on this planet long before us, and just as many animals, we have always been omnivores. They have a role to play in our eco-systems and we should make sure that the way we consume them enables their role to thrive.
Food Waste
Last but not least, let’s talk about food waste. I hesitated to put it first as it’s so important and something we can most easily influence on our end. The FAO estimates that about 30% of food is either lost or wasted. To give you a better idea, if food waste was a country, it would be the third most emitting country in the world, right after the US or China. It currently represents 8% of global emissions, and experts expect this number to go up in the next 10 years. This also means we could produce up to 30% less food to maintain the same level of population nutrition as well as be able to feed a lot of people who are currently not having good access to food without producing more. This would also help reduce the need for increased production to feed our growing population.
The first thing to know about food waste is that it happens across the entire value chain.
And when it comes to food waste, Europe and the US are champions! To give you a better sense, each person in Europe or the US wastes about 170kg per year, or on average 1 US pound (a bit less than half a kilo) per day. This amounts in Europe alone to about 88 million tons per year (Stenmarch et al., 2016). In the US, this represents 21% of the food we buy and translates to about 1800$ per year per person! Our buy and throw approach to food is not only costly for the planet, it’s also very bad for our wallets.
You get it, food drives major impacts while it is essential to our lives. The reasons for that impact are various while mostly linked to intensive agriculture, including the excess meat production, the constant deforestation happening, the use of pesticides, and fertilizers depleting our soils. The last one, less fully linked to agricultural practices is food waste.
As with the need to cut our impact drastically, we need collective action around our food system.
Now there is some good news. In the brand’s section of this section of the blog, you will find articles around companies or brands that are making a change towards improved practices or offering new solutions.
Additionally, we need a strong shift in what we, consumers, demand from them, and our consuming habits.
Top tips to consume more sustainable food
What are key things you can do to reduce the environmental impact of food?
Reduce food waste
The first thing to think about is how to minimize your food waste.
Buy smaller portions or products you know you’ll be able to reuse. If you are buying a huge bottle of milk but will only consume half of it, go for a smaller bottle, the added packaging will be less impactful than your food waste would be. It’s better to have some additional packaging than wasting food.
Take food home from the restaurants. While this is common practice in the US, it’s not always the case in Europe – don’t leave out food on your plate, it often will go straight to the bin!
Buy ugly foods. Some supermarkets like Intermarché in France have launched campaigns around ugly products. Consumers are less likely to buy products if these are not perfect, so if you see a deformed product, go for it, you’ll know that you likely avoided it being thrown at the end of the day.
Reduce and improve meat consumption
As I mentioned, the world doesn’t need everyone to become vegetarians or vegans. However, it for sure needs us to drastically reduce our meat consumption. You can reduce red meat consumption to once a month for instance, replacing it a couple of times with a plant-based meat substitute or with alternative sources of proteins.
When you decide it’s the time of the week or the month for your meat, make sure it is sustainable. You can typically identify sustainable red meat or dairy product if it is grass-fed or mentions regenerative practices.
And if you can, buy directly your meat and dairy products at local farmers where you can see the animals on the field. Unfortunately, what you see on the packaging is not always fully reflecting what is happening on the field. If you have the option to skip the intermediary, do it. On top of the environmental benefits, you’ll ensure that farmers are paid a fair amount for their production.
Eat deforestation-free food
This means first and foremost trying to avoid the consumption of products that drive huge amounts of deforestation. Reduce your consumption of palm oil or beef, and when eating soy, try to ensure you can trace back its origin to regions where deforestation is less occurring like Europe.
Buy certified products. While labels and certification systems are not perfect, they are likely better than nothing. This also means that the company has at least identified deforestation as a key issue to them. Also, certifications are currently working on improving their tracing so there are chances that these will become stronger in the future. While I will deep dive into these in a separate article in this blog, some examples of labels are RTRS, RSPO, …
Remember that on top of cattle, soy and palm oil, commodities like cocoa, coffee, and sugar are also often associated with deforestation.
Eat local and seasonal products
I insist on eating local when seasonal! Let me explain why. As I mentioned, agriculture production will be what will drive the biggest impact. Therefore, if you consume a product produced locally but that naturally wouldn’t have grown in your region, its production has likely required energy and fertilizer intensive practices that significantly increase the agricultural impact and therefore the overall impact of your product. You’ll be better off consuming a product that was grown naturally in a neighboring region than the other way around. Also, local doesn’t have to be 20 miles, your country, or in Europe, your neighboring country is still considered local.
Eat organic food
Organic production leads to reduced use of fertilizers and pesticides, which is both good for you and the planet.
It’s important to know that organic doesn’t mean local, non-industrialized, or fair trade. Just as it’s important to know that all organic certifications and standards are not equal. However, on average, organic food is still more sustainable as they usually guarantee reduced use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
Now if you have to choose between local from a farmer you know and you trust in terms of practices and organic from far away, go for local, and if you can have both, even better!
What can you expect in the sustainable food section
In this section, you’ll find articles going deeper into each of the topics I mentioned above. I will give concrete examples and solutions to help you navigate the numerous options there are to eat more sustainably.