The Need For Sustainability

image
Author: Chris Hinyub
Published: 14 Dec, 2008
Updated: 13 Oct, 2022
4 min read

By ignoring theprinciples of sustainability, our current industrial-farming model isdestined to collapse. To understand the need for sustainability inour food policy is to make the first, crucial step toward renewal ofour farm system.

To change the wayCalifornians grow, process, distribute and buy their food, it willtake a groundswell of consumer support to make the paradigm shift tolocal food economies. This change in mindset can only come througheducational campaigns before it comes through economic necessity. Ifevery Californian understood the concept of sustainable agriculture,its importance and implications, there would not be much need for newlaws, as such information would surely invigorate sweeping change inconsumer and producer habits from the bottom up. That said, it isimportant to reaffirm the costs, both plain and hidden, that we asconsumers pay to a global food cartel that is currently endangeringour chances of survival as a species. To aim away from these things,as a society, toward sustainability in the broadest sense of the word– vitality over an extended period of time – is toimmediately protest the status quo.

The conventionalfarming model used throughout the industrialized world relies heavilyon petrochemical externalities and is not applicable to naturalsystems, at least for any reassuring duration of time. And goodfarming, as thousands of years of human husbandry bears testimony, isreliant on a natural model. Such natural systems operate verydifferently than our conventional, exploitive approach. The conditionof sustainability is never asked of in a natural setting, it isdemanded. Sustainability requires return of organic materials to theearth, the maintenance of a balance between forest and pasture so thewater table is accessible to agricultural pursuits, local andintimate knowledge of land and its terrain so as best to retain itsnaturally occurring biodiversity, and so much nuanced knowledge ofparticular locations and their climates that it requires a rejectionof the blanket-approach strategy of industrial Ag and its supportingpolicies of food production.

The current modeldegrades the nutritional content of the food we eat by relying on“toxicrescue chemistry” to supplant the naturalprocesses of living soil. Millions of tons of synthetic fertilizersand pesticides stifle the work of beneficial microorganisms thatdwell in and sustain the fertility of the soil. Heavy machinedependent operations further exacerbate topsoil depletion, placingfuture generations at greater risk of famine. This model alsodegrades the people involved in agriculture by subjugating farmowners and farm laborers to feudalistic commodity price controls andthus diminishing returns under increasing global competition. Itdisperses rural communities as can be seen in the eschewing ofmillions of small farmers and their family’s from the land intocongested cities since the mid-twentieth century. Coinciding withthis record setting forced migration was the dramatic consolidationof these lands into the hands of fewer individuals and corporations.

Highlighting thedangers of this corporate concentration of power over our foodsystem, Christopher D. Cook, author of
Dietfor a Dead Planet, summarizes the quantifiable “hiddencosts” of global agribusiness:

Foodin America seems at first glance bountiful and, for most, fairlyinexpensive. But behind the grocery receipt, the costs of today’scorporate-controlled food supply are staggering. Foodborne illnessescost more than $30 billion a year in treatment and lost work time. Wespend $78 billion annually in medical expenses for diseasesassociated with diet and physical inactivity — now thesecond-leading cause of preventable deaths; two thirds of allAmericans are overweight, 30% are medically defined as obese. Nearly$20?billion in public money goes to farm subsidy payments, twothirds of which go to the top 10% of growers. Untold millions moreare spent covering emergency room costs for uninsured food-industryworkers, tens of thousands of whom are injured on the job each year;and cleaning up massive animal-waste spills from factory farms, whichhave become the top polluter of America’s waterways.

These “taxes”are fleecing Americans at a crucial time in our history. The only wayto right the ship and ensure that people can afford to eat is toreturn to sound policy. This means incentives for producers to growsustainably (i.e. scaled down), sell locally and have the pricesetting power that only the supranational commodity traders posses atthis time.

What this reallyentails is dispossessing federal agencies and their agribusinessallies of centralized power over our food supply by instituting localfood policies that offer incentives for the creation of more smallfarms and streamlined local food distribution channels that undercutthe current international infrastructure. California, with itsalready diverse yield of agricultural products and its burgeoninglocal food movement, is in the best possible position to make thesepolicies an everyday reality and create a model Farm Bill of its own;only, one that invigorates the countryside and keeps its participantsin good health. The result would be the economic reunion of ruralCalifornia with its suburban and urban counterparts. The goal infacilitating such beneficial marketplace relationships is completefood independence for California and the best model of food policyfor the rest of the nation.

In my next installment,I will discuss policies that can be put into place immediately toeffectively establish a food system that is California’s veryown.

IVP Donate

Latest articles

CA capitol building dome with flags.
Why is CA Senator Mike McGuire Trying to Kill the Legal Cannabis Industry?
California’s legal cannabis industry is under mounting pressure, and in early June, state lawmakers and the governor appeared poised to help. A bill to freeze the state’s cannabis excise tax at 15% sailed through the State Assembly with a unanimous 74-0 vote. The governor’s office backed the plan. And legal cannabis businesses, still struggling to compete with unregulated sellers and mounting operating costs, saw a glimmer of hope....
03 Jul, 2025
-
7 min read
I voted buttons
After First RCV Election, Charlottesville Voters Back the Reform: 'They Get It, They Like It, They Want to Do It Again'
A new survey out of Charlottesville, Virginia, shows overwhelming support for ranked choice voting (RCV) following the city’s first use of the system in its June Democratic primary for City Council. Conducted one week after the election, the results found that nearly 90% of respondents support continued use of RCV....
03 Jul, 2025
-
3 min read
Crowd in Time Square.
NYC Exit Survey: 96% of Voters Understood Their Ranked Choice Ballots
An exit poll conducted by SurveyUSA on behalf of the nonprofit better elections group FairVote finds that ranked choice voting (RCV) continues to be supported by a vast majority of voters who find it simple, fair, and easy to use. The findings come in the wake of the city’s third use of RCV in its June 2025 primary elections....
01 Jul, 2025
-
6 min read