At the end of June, I had the opportunity to present on ‘functional sustainability’ at the World Potato Conference in Adelaide, Australia… and what an incredibly huge reinforcement boost it was.
The message resonated. Farmers are hungry for tangible ways to increase their sustainable efforts while maintaining economically viable yields. A lot of voices are calling for farming reform. However, feel good soundbites don’t feed the world.
Let me give you some background:
Sustainability is one of the trendiest but least defined words in agri-food today. Don’t get me wrong, sustainability is absolutely a worthy and necessary goal. Too often, however, we get hung up on the concept without defining a clear path or even a clear definition of what sustainability really means. What ends up happening is that the term comes to mean something different to everyone. Though so many parts of the value chain are trying to “become more sustainable”, the varied definitions — often driven by pressure from outside forces — means agriculture’s efforts to chase sustainability have been inconsistent, disjointed, and sometimes negligibly effective. Most worryingly, where the sustainability concept used to be something that farmers greeted with excitement and commitment, ‘sustainability’ is generating increasing disinterest, even jaded eye-rolling, in the agricultural community.
A couple years back, we dreamed up the term ‘functional sustainability’. I’ll admit the concept came from a place of frustration: the wording started off simply looking for an alternative to the idealistic, unrealistic sustainability expectations pushed onto farmers by often uninformed regulators and consumers.
The more we thought about the ‘functional sustainability’ concept, however, the more the merging of two key concepts — the high-value ideal of ‘sustainability’ with the real-world ‘functional’ — made sense. As the name suggests, the concept revolves around practical, achievable change that supports long-term economic and ecological sustainability. For instance, as a pest management company and soil health advocates, we are investing in innovative worldwide trials and working with third party independent researchers to establish practices that manage pests and pathogens while promoting long-term soil health that leads to economic farm health. Solutions based on the best agricultural science, when done right, can better accomplish social science objectives. To us, that is functional sustainability.
At last year’s PAA conference in Charlottetown, Peter VanderZaag, World Potato Congress President and notable supporter of the potato industry, was intrigued by the concept and encouraged me to present at the World Potato Conference. The more I think and talk about functional sustainability, the more I absolutely believe it is the path forward for agriculture. Not only was my presentation warmly received by the attendees, it generated a pile of really excellent follow-up discussions. I am optimistic this is the start of buy-in for ‘functional sustainability’.
Potato producers are careful stewards of the land who are keen for real solutions. We need to come together as a whole industry to give credit for the excellent work farmers already do and to support further practical, effective steps towards functional sustainability. We are striving to do our part.
