介绍:
Sustainability
Seeing Past the Supermarket
Sustainability is a topic of increasing importance as consumers become more interested in learning what lies beyond the supermarket. Where does food come from? How was it grown? Where was it produced? Sustainability is a multi-faceted issue, in which the food production system and sustainable diets play a crucial role.
What is sustainability?
Jeffrey D. Sachs, an expert on sustainable development and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, wrote: “Like all living species, humanity depends on nature for food and water, materials for survival, and safety from dire environmental threats, such as epidemics and natural catastrophes. Yet for a species that depends on the beneficence of nature, or on what the scientists call ‘environmental services,’ we are doing a poor job of protecting the physical basis of our very survival!” [1]
As we refer to it here, sustainability means the enactment of practices that fulfill the needs of society while protecting the physical basis of our long term survival, our environment. We cannot have a secure food supply unless that food supply is sustainable.
Why is a sustainable food supply important?
The world’s population is rapidly expanding, and it is estimated there will be over 9 billion people on our planet in as little as 25 years. [1] It is essential that food sustainability be an international priority to ensure that the rapidly expanding population will have both enough food to eat, and access to high quality, nutritious foods.
Food systems throughout the world are currently not sustainable, even though at present almost a billion persons are not getting enough food and most of the 7 billion inhabitants of the world eat diets poor in quality.
Story: Smack Dab In The Middle. By Anita Riggio
