Food chains and sustainability

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Category: Sustainable eating

Created on Monday, 14 January 2013 10:57

Written by Super User

Sustainability along the food chain is a very important issue nowadays, but what does it mean, really?

Once, only big international organizations were interested in it; lately, sustainability of the food chain became a relevant problem also at the local level. Citizens figured out that the way we grow, transform, transport and consume food can be dangerous for our own health and for natural resources' one.

We realised that producing food represents a problem, to be resolved with urgency, for at the present moment we are not able to guarantee to future generations, nor even to the present ones, enough and healthy food, which is produced respecting people's rights and planet's natural resources.

We keep asking how can our food system be so paradoxical, with 870 millions of people undernourished in 2013, while more than a billion people is overfed.

One more paradox: we are afraid the earth won't be able to produce food enough for its increasing population, while every year we through away, from farm to fork, at least one third of what we produce.

At the same time, we became aware that both food production and our consumption patterns have been generating, over the years, tremendous negative impacts, that are now threatening people's and environment's health.

About people: too much food and lifestyles often deficient in physical activity are responsible for the increase of pathologies (such as diabetes, cardiovascular desease and tumors), not only in the western part of the world. In addition to this, there are other diseases, conveyed through foods contaminated by pathogens (such as viruses or bacteria), as a result of an intensive food chain too often not respectful of animal welfare.

About the environment: the world agriculture is co-responsible of those climate changes that are now threatening its own productivity, also contributing to the depletion of natural resources, such as soil, water and biodiversity, which are fundamental for the production of food.