Whether you side with organic or conventional, soil fumigation or in-crop disease management, no-till, cover crops or any of the so many other components of the sustainability discussion, let’s agree to agree: what matters is that sustainability’s definition prioritizes both environmental and economic longevity, and — I can’t overstate this enough — be functional.
In 2016, the UN committed to eradicating world hunger by 2030. Eight years later, are we going in the right direction? Purely pragmatically speaking, if agriculture’s role is to successfully achieve the critical goal of feeding the world, while also decreasing our input imprint on the environment, upholding worker safety, and more, we need to pursue functional sustainability.
The challenge, however, is that we are torn between two kinds of science: social science versus agricultural science. Crop pests and diseases are a reality. To have tools at our disposal that have been rigorously tested and approved by regulating bodies, then condemn farmers for using those tools, presents a real challenge for the people working hard to produce the food needed to feed millions. Agricultural science has driven the yield and quality gains we benefit from today.
So here’s a small change we’re making. We have always presented our product’s production gains in terms of yield increases. We have started presenting our gains in terms of “servings”, as in portions on a plate. It’s a way to flip the script and increase understanding. Yield increases can seem abstract – it’s easy to say ‘no’ to a farmer if a product’s benefit is measured in hundredweight gains. But, when we present gains in terms of millions more food servings produced, suddenly the messaging is a whole lot clearer and harder to ignore. If we can talk in terms of ‘servings lost’ by decisions to rule out tools, it clarifies the tradeoffs.
The role of agriculture is to feed people. We must do that as efficiently and as responsibly as possible. If production becomes inefficient in one region due to impossible regulation, the natural and only outcome is that the production must move elsewhere: generally, to a place where regulation is more lax and comes with a carbon footprint consideration.
The more advanced we become, the less we understand about how we became advanced. We forget our history and the hard-earned gains in productivity, food safety, worker safety, and environmental advancements. Let’s continue to build on the good intentions by including functional sustainability in our decisions.
