The local and sustainable agriculture movement has really blossomed in recent years. Farmers' markets are thriving, local artisans such as microbrewers, cheese makers, and Slow Food restauranteurs are enjoying great success, and community supported agriculture (CSA) programs have sprouted rapidly (13,000 CSA farms are registered in the US alone).
While this trend has allowed for me personally to imbibe in ridiculously enjoyable amounts of deliciousness in this beer and cheese Mecca called Wisconsin, there's a much more profound reason that I hope the trend continues to expand exponentially. Local, sustainable agriculture is the way of the future if we are to take on climate change with any hope of success.
The industrial agriculture model from which the majority of our food comes is totally unsustainable. Because we ship food thousands of miles before it sits on a grocery store shelf for a month and then finally gets eaten, artificial sweeteners and fats are added to avoid food spoilage. Not only do these additives account for much of the US obesity epidemic, but they also reinforce the monoculture model of agriculture, where corn is king. The average American consumes 38 pounds of high fructose corn syrup every year - it's in virtually every processed food item we eat. By only growing one type of crop and by using massive amounts of fertilizers to increase yields, the soil becomes decimated. Ideally, fields should have time to recover and bring nutrients back to the soil through crop rotation, but in the continual push for higher and higher yields, farmers don't have the chance to do this. Instead, as the soil in their fields becomes less and less nutrient-rich, they rely on more and more fertilizers, leading to a vicious circle of soil degradation.
That isn't the worst of it, either. To make all those fertilizers requires extremely large amounts of fossil fuels, directly increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Combine those emissions with the transportation of food cross-country in semi trucks, and our agriculture sector contributes 31% of all GHG emissions each year. That's more than any other human activity besides the construction, heating, and cooling of buildings.
Eating locally and sustainably cuts the transportation emissions, cuts the fertilizer emissions, and improves your health because additives aren't needed.
A common criticism of the organic movement is that it's not affordable for everyone, and that the yields aren't enough to support the entire food system. First of all, conventional agriculture receives billions of dollars in federal subsidies to keep costs artificially low and to research how to increase yields with that agricultural model. If those dollars went to organic agriculture instead, the prices would surely be much more competitive. Then add to that the cost of health issues from obesity and the damage done by GHG emissions on our climate, and industrial agriculture's prices skyrocket.
In Germany, organic farming has been implemented on a large scale and has been found to elicit the same yields as industrial farming after a 3-7 year transition period. This amount of time could go down if more research funding were funneled toward organic techniques.
You don't have to start your own organic farm to be a part of this transition, although that would be awesome. You can decide to put your morals where your mouth is and eat ethically, like my friends Shawn and Lianna describe here. You can also just plant a garden, like Michelle Obama did in the White House South Lawn, an act echoing the Victory Garden movement that Eleanor Roosevelt started during World War II. Within two years of Roosevelt's push to plant gardens, 50% of all fruits and vegetables consumed in the US were from these household, backyard Victory Gardens. We can make that happen again.
We all have to eat, so why not do so in a way that is building a healthier, sustainable future?
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