THURSDAY, JAN 26, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 3-23
Sustainable Food Systems
5.1. Why local foods?
As expert soil scientists such as Dr Elaine Ingham and Dr Christine Jones point out, we need no soil amendments to ensure healthy plants; all we need to do as gardeners and farmers is to work with nature to ensure that we have a healthy soil microbiome that releases nutrients from parent material in the soil and healthy ecosystems that redistribute nutrients. But we also need to ensure that those nutrients are returned to the soil for various reasons:
["Rodale Institute Names Dr. Elaine Ingham as Chief Scientist". Dr Christine Jones, "the application of high rates of inorganic nitrogen has many unintended negative consequences on-farm. These include deterioration of the water-stable aggregates important for soil structural stability.” Unless 'high' means far in excess, most soil scientists would note that nitrogen fertilizer at recommended application rates stimulates plant and root growth, thereby increasing the amount of soil organic material and helping to build water-stable soil aggregates.]
Waste from one organism is food for another and completing the nutrient cycles locally ensures that we do not degrade our ecosystems. The local food webs mentioned above, therefore, are crucial to the overall health of an ecosystem, so we have to maintain the above ground, grazing food web that transfers energy and nutrients upwards in the system, as well as the (partially) below-ground detrital food web that breaks down and returns nutrients to the system. In the grazing food web, photosynthesising plants are the primary producers that are consumed by herbivores and so on up to the top predators. The detrital food chain takes dead organic matter and reduces it to its nutrient parts through scavengers (such as hyenas and vultures etc.), shredders (larger arthropods), digesters (smaller arthropods, worms, bacteria and fungi). We can clearly see that loss of biodiversity is a major threat to the sustainability of these food webs and the loss of nutrients from waste is a threat to biodiversity.
· Microbiologists and some nutritionists also suspect that there is a relationship between the local soil microbiota and the gut microbiomes of local people and that a predisposition towards local varieties of food, local cuisines and microbiome health is passed down epigenetically from generation to generation.
· Global trade in food, and our present system of water-carrier disposal of excrement, breaks these nutrient cycles, washes nutrients out to sea instead of returning them to the soil.
Our own gut microbiome is part of this nutrient cycle (Figure 5.1). Imports of food break with our part in the cycle, and with the local microbiome. The focus of our global economy on agriculture for export is equally disruptive of our local nutrient cycle, because it exports both nutrients and water.
Besides the obvious benefits to a rural economy and revitalised community from a transition to locally produced foods, fresh and nutrient dense, sold at farmers markets, this transition is an absolute imperative for ecosystem health, the functional cycles and human well-being. We cannot afford to destroy the Earth microbiome that has been assuring the continuance of life on this planet for most of its 4.5 billion years.
5.2. Research into Sustainable Food Systems
This section explores the growing field of Sustainable Food Systems (SFS), particularly since, according to IPCC 2019 report, the global food system has been estimated to be responsible for between 21-37% of total net anthropogenic GHG emissions. It stands to reason that by embedding sustainability within the global food system, a significant impact can be made to mitigate climate change. However, the resources that drive the modernity of the global food system, has created a huge complexity gap with traditional food systems, hence the need for research into SFS in order to bridge this divide.
Besides mitigating climate change, an SFS should also provide healthy food which has a positive impact upon related environmental, economic and social factors. A SFS starts with sustainable agricultural practices; leading to more sustainable and equitable food distribution; an emphasis on local sustainable traditional diets; a reduction of food waste throughout the process; and, by promoting the local circular economy in harnessing local capitals, such as, natural resources, finances, farmers, value-adding processes, labour and traditional social capital. Given these basic requirements of SFS, it can be seen that SFS are central to all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. To this end, it was stated by FAO (2018) in “Transforming food and agriculture to achieve the SDGs”, “that food and agriculture, the prime connection between people and the planet, can help achieve multiple SDGs”. Furthermore, in this connection, the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2016 reported a new way of viewing the SDGs and how they are all linked to food by considering economies and societies like embedded parts of the biosphere, as shown in Figure 5.2. More specifically, they stated that, “This model represents new way of viewing the Sustainable Development Goals and how they are all linked to food. It calls for a shift away from the current sectorial approach where social, economic, and ecological development are seen as separate parts. Instead we must transition toward a logic where the economy serves society so that it evolves within the safe operating space of the planet”.
Figure 5.2: How food connects all the SDGs, Stockholm Resilience Centre
5.3. Certification Systems
It seems like a travesty of justice that in order for sustainable practices on agricultural enterprises to be accepted, they need to be formally validated and certified organic, whereas, industrial agricultural enterprises can simply conduct business as usual. Although it is discerning consumers that need to be satisfied about the authenticity of organic produce, in time, the same consumers will hopefully grow in numbers and become more outspoken to demand that harmful industrial agricultural enterprises should have strict permits to operate, whilst organic agriculture becomes the new business as usual model. Meanwhile, the current organic producer standards do set a reasonable benchmark for sustainable agriculture in order to compare against industrial agriculture. Some of the common certification systems of sustainable agriculture are explored below:
· Organic Certification by IFOAM: The existence of agreed standards based on national systems brought together by IFOAM has allowed international trading of organic products to take place with a good level of assurance that products are really organic. The market for organic produce is growing in many countries. There is pressure from governments and large agricultural corporations to reduce standards, including the percentage of organic content in products, especially when demand exceeds supply. IFOAM, the Soil Association in UK, and the Rodale Institute continue to be the guardians of high levels of standards. Organic certification is also available for groups of small-scale farmers wherein their formally constituted association, co-operative or even an organic packshed, is certified organic, which in turn, provides a guarantee that the collective of small scale producers are organic. This is called a participatory guarantee system (PSG) and significantly lowers the cost of organic certification for small scale farmers.
- Biodynamic Certification: Biodynamic Agriculture emphasises balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a closed, self-nourishing system. Biodynamics has its own certification system, which covers all the requirements for organic farming plus certain additions, including a longer conversion period for the land to be prepared for Biodynamic Certification. Demeter International is the largest certification organisation for biodynamic agriculture and is also one of three predominant organic certifiers.
- Fair Trade: This movement seeks to promote greater equity in international trading partnerships through dialogue, transparency, and respect. It promotes sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers in developing countries. (Source: Fairtrade, Wikipedia). The Fairtrade Standards combine a range of economic, environmental and social criteria that are independently audited as part of Fairtrade certification. These criteria reflect Fairtrade’s goal to promote sustainable production and decent livelihoods. When you buy Fairtrade, you help to ensure these factors are not casually written off as ‘externalities’ or treated as costs that farmers and workers should bear alone. (Source: Fairtrade).
[New USDA rule boosts “organic” food oversight, targets fraud]
5.9. BioDistrict Approach to Sustainable Food Systems – The Italian Experience
As background, most local organic market chains have start-up challenges in moving from small niche markets to supplying large-scale markets with volume, and consequently, mainstream wholesalers and retailers have challenges in securing and promoting organic produce. These challenges exist primarily due to the grip of industrial based agriculture and its associated agro-business value chains.
Despite these challenges, there have been some innovative pioneering initiatives in Italy to establish BioDistricts, based upon watersheds, valleys, etc., which strongly supports small scale organic producers. This pioneering initiative led to the establishment in 2014 of the International Network of Eco‐Regions (IN.N.E.R), which is designed to foster cooperation between Italian BioDistricts and similar initiatives in Europe and other continents. IN.N.E.R has defined a BioDistrict, or EcoRegion, as, “A territory naturally devoted to organic, where farmers, citizens, public authorities, realize an agreement aimed at the sustainable management of local resources, based on the principles of organic farming and agroecology”.
The forerunners of the BioDistrict model, the Cilento area in Italy, have established this model around three main dimensions (Source: Healthy Growth):
· The social dimension. It is about, more specifically, the development of social cohesion in support of sustainable and inclusive territorial development strategies; the improvement of social aggregation and cultural exchanges; the centrality of farmer’s role; the revitalization of rural areas; the generation of new job opportunities, for vulnerable groups too, through social farming; and, the protection of farmer’s and consumer’s health.
· The economic dimension. It focuses, in particular, on the economic benefits that organic farmers, tourist, cultural, catering enterprises can draw from the bio‐district initiative; the reduction of organic certification costs which represent a significant financial burden for small farmers; the creation of new economic activities in the area; the promotion through territorial marketing tools (like AIAB Bio‐Distretto® label); the aggregation of the organic supply; and, the access to alternative market channels (e.g. green public procurement and short supply chain initiatives).
· The environmental dimension. It entails the protection and increase of biodiversity (through the cultivation of local seeds and ancient varieties); the protection of natural resources, especially of underground water sources; the improvement of soil fertility, alleviation of the desertification risk as well as of the greenhouse effect; landscape conservation; and, maintenance.
The advantages of the BioDistrict model, is that the organic farming movement is allowed to grow and restore traditional cultural landscapes, one district at a time, uncontaminated from the industrial agro-business model. In time, as the boundaries of BioDistricts becomes blurred, a larger BioRegional model emerges, with even larger positive environmental impact.
Module 3, lesson 24
