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Moving toward a healthier and more sustainable food system will involve tackling longstanding challenges and addressing new and evolving demands. This position paper reviews the scientific basis for understanding the US food system and sustainability, identifies specific issues of concern, discusses key related policies and action opportunities, and outlines APHA goals.

By uniting multiple food system themes in a single statement, it aims to provide clarity, new emphases, and solid direction, encouraging the APHA to increase its activities and leadership to promote a more sustainable, healthier, and more equitable food system. Food systems include inputs, mechanisms, and structures for food production, processing, distribution, acquisition, preparation, consumption, and metabolism.

Food systems are deeply entwined with many social issues. Overlapping food systems serve local, regional, national, and global levels; herein, the term refers to the national level, unless noted. APHA defines a sustainable food system as one that provides healthy food to meet current food needs while maintaining healthy ecosystems that can also provide food for generations to come with minimal negative impact to the environment. A sustainable food system also encourages local production and distribution infrastructures and makes nutritious food available, accessible, and affordable to all.

Further, it is humane and just, protecting farmers and other workers, consumers, and communities. The Human Right to Food The right to food is a fundamental human right.

Hydroponics and the future of farming

The four pillars of food security are availability, stability of supply, access and utilization. The United States has eroded the pillars of food security. APHA can provide an important stimulus to help restore the pillars and ensure that our food system is sustainable. Human Health Impacts This position paper describes key environmental health and public health nutrition issues and discusses key affected populations.

Several recent APHA policies have extensively addressed obesity and diet-related disease issues. Fertilizers and pesticides contaminate soils, groundwater, and streams. For instance, runoff into the Mississippi River has led to a Gulf of Mexico dead zone that in some recent years has been as large as the state of New Jersey.


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Contamination with animal waste produced within the industrial system is a concern for human and ecosystem health because the waste often contains pathogens, including antibiotic-resistant bacteria, dust, arsenic, dioxin and other persistent organic pollutants, antibiotics, and complex mixtures of hundreds of volatile organic compounds. Industrial food animal production has significant effects on air quality, emitting ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, particles contaminated with many different microorganisms, organic dusts, and bacterial endotoxins.

Antibiotic Overuse and Other Feed Additives Antibiotics and heavy metals are routinely used to promote growth in food animals. Energy Use Industrialized agriculture methods are fossil fuel intensive; the US food system accounts for an estimated Water Use Industrial agriculture requires extensive irrigation. Corn and soy are particularly heavy users among plants. Industrial meat production, especially beef, requires the most water—much of it to irrigate feed crops.

For example, by one estimate it takes more than L of water to produce grain and hay for each kilogram of industrially produced beef. Pharmaceutical and Industrial Crops Drug and biotechnology companies use genetically engineered plants in which genes foreign to the plants are inserted to produce desired qualities to produce drugs, hormones, vaccines, and industrial chemicals. The health and ecosystem threats are magnified when the modified genes in plant species are also used for food such as corn, rice, and soybeans and when these altered crops are grown outdoors.

2. We don't need to

Biodiversity US biodiversity variety of life forms is challenged by purposeful industrial decisions and unintended consequences of agricultural and industrial society. In , the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that 1 in 5 farm animal breeds was on the verge of extinction. One in 4 acres of US cropland has been used for growing corn alone, and this practice is projected to increase in response to growing demand for corn ethanol.

Many aquaculture operations pose issues similar to industrial meat production facilities, including high stocking densities, use of antibiotics and parasiticides, and waste discharge into the surrounding environment. In addition, feed for predatory fish such as salmon uses large amounts of fishmeal and oil, made from wild caught fish.

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Approximately 2 to 5 pounds of wild fish are needed to produce 1 pound of predatory farmed fish, leading to a net loss of protein from the ocean. Nutritional Public Health Impacts Predominant Food Products US farm policy provides few incentives promoting production of fruits and vegetables, but it provides strong incentives that contribute to excess production and consumption of sweets, fats, and meat.


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That figure also does not include the substantial amount of domestically produced corn and soybeans exported for use as animal feed overseas. In addition, farmers typically use seeds bred for high yield, pest resistance, and other qualities rather than for nutritional value. One study found declines in key nutrients in many foods between and and attributed them to the choices of crop varieties planted.

Lower-nutrient—containing crops enter the human food supply both through direct consumption and through animal product consumption. Meat from corn- and soy-fed animals is high in omega-6 fatty acids, whereas grass-fed animals are higher in omega-3 fatty acids. Studies show that industrial Western diets may provide more than 15 times the optimal omegaomega-3 ratio and that high ratios may be associated with adverse health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, osteoporosis, and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Animal studies suggest that linoleic acid has beneficial effects on heart disease, cancer, and the immune system.

Sustainable Agriculture Essay | Bartleby

Seafood Products Both the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report 79 and the American Heart Association80 have recommended that individuals eat 2 servings of fish per week as a good source of lean protein and as the only significant source of preformed long-chain polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids [namely docosahexaenoic acid DHA and eicosapentaenoic acid. However, American seafood consumption falls far short of these recommendations, averaging only 5 oz of fish per week. DHA supplementation has also been associated with increased visual acuity and cognitive function in infants and children.

Seafood products are also important dietary sources of other toxic chemicals of concern, including polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxins. Food labels can let consumers know where their food comes from, support thinking about the distances food travels and related transportation energy use, inform about methods of production, increase traceability for food safety investigations, and raise consumer trust in labels as guides to informed food purchasing.

Labeling can also serve to reflect consumer demand back through the food chain, potentially contributing to growth of more sustainable farm production. The Farm Bill required labels indicating countries of origin for some meats, fruit, fish, and shellfish, but implementation for meat and fruit was delayed because of opposition from the food-processing industry and large corporate retailers.

Infectious agents. Infectious food-borne illnesses exert an enormous human and economic toll in the United States. Industrial food animal production is often omitted from news media and other accounts of food safety hazards and, as such, may receive less attention in intervention strategy development. One study found that when children switched to organic diets, their urine pesticide levels dropped immediately and precipitously. Animal feed ingredients. In industrialized production of poultry and livestock, there is a need for much-expanded scrutiny of feed ingredients and their potential to affect human health.

The European Union has never approved arsenicals in animal feed. Affected Populations The food system affects everyone.

Future of Food: Farming in the age of climate change

Some groups, however, carry more of the burden. Low-income food consumers are particularly affected by obesity and diet-related disease, as discussed in other APHA policy statements. Many low-income and minority communities experience physical and economic barriers to accessing varied, healthy, and affordable food. These barriers are determined in part by limited mobility e. Efforts are needed to understand other mechanisms that lead to an unhealthy diet, including gaps in environmental and policy supports to enable more locally based food distribution.

US policies that favor deregulation and promote unsustainable overproduction of grains such as corn and soy have favored global food companies, as have large-scale animal agriculture operations that use artificially inexpensive grains for feed, further concentrating their market power. Meanwhile, smaller and midsized farm owners have been less and less able to compete effectively in the market. Agricultural consolidation is associated with money moving out of rural communities. Rural communities often have little say when industrial food production facilities want to move in.

Large agribusiness lobbies have systematically introduced and passed state laws stripping local governments of their right to pass local ordinances designed to regulate large-scale animal factories and mitigate their public health and environmental impacts. Throughout the food system, reported occupational injury, illness, and fatality rates are high, 31, despite the barriers to workers reporting these events, such as immigration concerns and precarious financial status.

In , agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting had the highest rate of occupational fatalities among major industry sectors. In addition to impacts on individuals and communities, immigration policy can have significant impacts on food system stability. Much food consumed in the United States is also grown or processed overseas, including by child laborers. Low-Income Countries—Farmers, Food Consumers Since the s, US agricultural policy has focused on producing large quantities of key grains domestically, with the expectation of exporting the surplus.

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Although such contributions can help feed the hungry in the short term, they also can devastate the livelihoods of local farmers and, eventually, local economies. Brazil successfully challenged the legality of US cotton subsidies under World Trade Organization agreements, and Canada, the European Union, Australia, Argentina, and Brazil are challenging US corn subsidies based on the argument that such subsidies contribute to illegal dumping.

Federal and State Food Policies, Regualtions and Provisions Farm and Food Policy Historically, a key farm support mechanism in US agricultural policy was a set of provisions to stabilize crop prices at levels to ensure fair compensation for farmers. This was considered necessary given an inherent tendency in crop agriculture to overproduce. More recent farm policy has abandoned the goal of fair, stable prices.

Why Should We Eat Insects? It’s the Future of Food

Instead, since the s US farm policy has promoted the high production of selected crops, particularly corn and soybeans, in ways that have tended to drive market prices below the cost of production. Direct payments to farmers have provided short-term, though unsustainable, means for keeping farmers on the farm.

Although US commodity subsidies have nearly tripled since the passage of the Farm Bill, net farm income has declined This omnibus bill, due for renewal every 5 to 6 years, is a major piece of US legislation that helps shape what foods are grown or produced and what foods are available in the US marketplace. With many powerful interests attempting to influence the farm bill and great potential public health impact, it is important for the public health community to weigh in. Additional priority areas of public health concern — include provisions to. Infrastructure to Support Healthy, Sustainable, Just Agriculture Demand for local, sustainable, and fair trade food production has recently increased.

Consumers seeking to make ethical food choices are thus required to choose between their values; improved infrastructure could improve consumer options for obtaining food that is healthy, sustainable, and just. Specific areas needing funding include public health tracking, research, education, inspections, and other interventions. Much research is needed to better understand the health effects of food system exposures and to develop optimal prevention methods.

Research is also needed on policy, social, and behavioral tools for increasing access to and consumption of sustainably produced foods. APHA recognizes the urgency of transforming our food system to promote environmental sustainability, improve nutritional health, and ensure social justice, and therefore—.

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