About Module 6

Food and agriculture are important for one simple reason: Everyone eats. Without food, we could not survive, let alone do anything else. And there are a lot of people around the world - more than eight billion. This means that there is a lot of agriculture going on in order to produce a lot of food. Finally, there are concerns about whether our agriculture can persist into the future. All this means that food and agriculture are crucial aspects of sustainable development around the world.

In this module, we are going to learn about some major facets of food and agriculture as they relate to sustainable development and other important individual and societal issues. We'll see how food is produced and how it affects both our health and the natural environment. We'll consider a variety of ethical and policy issues raised by food and agriculture. And we'll consider how agriculture can be sustained into the future.

What will we learn in Module 6?

By the end of Module 6, you should be able to:

• discuss what industrial agriculture is and the social and environmental impacts that it has;
• explain the unique issues raised by the use of livestock animals;
• describe connections between food-agriculture systems and nutrition;
• discuss major societal issues in food choice and policy.

What is due for Module 6? 

Module 6 has an unusually large number of required readings. These readings are all quite short, generally one to two pages. A large number of short readings has been selected to present you with a breadth of perspectives. A Written Assignment is also due this week drawing from this module and the previous. Check Canvas for due dates and to submit.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please post them to our Course Q & A discussion forum in Canvas. I will check that discussion forum often to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate. If you have a more specific concern, please send me a message through Inbox in Canvas.

In Module 2, we learned the importance of a systems perspective for understanding relationships between humanity and the natural environment. We’re going to begin this module by applying this systems perspective to food and agriculture.

The core idea here is to consider all factors that are relevant to food and agriculture. These are our system components. Here is a simple diagram giving a broad overview of food and agriculture systems:

Figure 6.1 Overview Diagram of Food and Agriculture Systems

Credit: © Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Inputs to agriculture include all of the resources that agriculture draws on in order to succeed. Resource inputs can include natural resources such as air, sunlight, rainwater, and soil nutrients for plant crops, or wild grasses and bodies of water for livestock animals to graze on and drink. Resource inputs can also include artificial resources such as artificial lighting, irrigated water, and synthetic fertilizers for plant crops, or prepared feed and water for livestock animals. Without these inputs, the plants and animals could not grow. Finally, the inputs also include the seeds and parents of the plants and animals, which are of course also necessary for the plants and animals to grow.

The sustainability of inputs is a core aspect of sustainable agriculture. Simply put, if we run out of the resources we need for successful agriculture, then our agriculture cannot be sustained. When agriculture depletes input resources such as water or fossil fuels, then the agriculture is probably unsustainable. But even if inputs are sustained, it is still possible for agriculture to be unsustainable. This is because agriculture impacts other things besides its inputs. Some of these other impacts can render agriculture unsustainable. These other impacts are discussed elsewhere in this module and in other modules.

Agriculture is, in the simplest of terms, the process for converting the inputs into food. Seeds are planted in soil. The soil is fertilized and watered as needed. Plants grow, and they are tended to as needed, such as by keeping pests away. Food from the plants is then harvested and eaten by humans, or fed to livestock animals who are eventually eaten by humans. The eating of food by humans, and in particular the nutrition derived from the eating, is perhaps the core end use of the agriculture. Thus, we can think of food and agriculture as being the process of getting nutrients from the natural environment into human bodies. And it is this. But it is also a lot more.

Throughout the process of getting nutrients from the natural environment into human bodies – that is, from inputs to end uses – there are other important components to the food-agriculture system, components that cannot be defined strictly in terms of nutrients. These include:

• social inputs, including the knowledge about how to conduct agriculture, the labor that performs the agriculture, and policies that facilitate the agriculture;
• the enjoyment of foods that taste good – an enjoyment that comes at least somewhat independently of the food's nutritional value;
• the socialization that occurs as people share meals together;
• livelihoods achieved by workers in the food and agriculture sectors, which includes everyone from poor subsistence farmers to rich agribusiness executives;
• environmental impacts of growing, transporting, and cooking food, and of uneaten food waste;
• the opportunities for people to do other things given that they have enough to eat.

The social inputs can be considered other inputs in the system diagram shown above. The enjoyment and socialization can be considered other end uses in the diagram. Livelihoods and environmental impacts are other consequences of every component in the diagram. Finally, the opportunities to do other things are consequences of the end uses, in particular, nutrition: without proper nutrition, we would not have the energy to do anything else with our lives. Thus, the system diagram can be redrawn as follows:

Figure 6.2 Overview Diagram of Food and Agriculture Systems

Credit: © Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

This diagram is not comprehensive. For example, it doesn’t mention the transportation of food from where it’s grown to where it’s prepared to where it’s eaten. So we should not assume that the diagram tells us everything we need to know about the food-agriculture system. But the diagram does give us a reasonable understanding of this system from a particular perspective. Let’s use this understanding to analyze a discussion of food and agriculture.

This systems perspective is valuable for helping us understand various aspects of food and agriculture. In the remainder of this module, we’ll look at major aspects of the food-agriculture system and, in particular, their connections to global society and the natural environment.

Industrial Agriculture

In Module 5, we learned about the importance of early agriculture to world development. In short, early agriculture permitted more humans to live, to live with better health, and to engage in activities other than basic survival. These other activities have brought us no less than civilization itself. While there can be some civilization without agriculture, there couldn’t be nearly as much as we have today.

Now, we’re going to learn about modern industrial agriculture, whose impacts have been every bit as consequential for humanity. Industrial agriculture has substantially increased global agricultural productivity, leading to much more food for a growing human population. Industrial agriculture has also impacted human society in a variety of other ways and has had major impacts on the environment, many of which are harmful. Industrial agriculture is thus an important but complex topic worth considering in some detail.

The Haber-Bosch Process for Nitrogen Fertilizer

Let’s begin by examining one of the core industrial processes used in modern agriculture: the Haber-Bosch process for synthesizing ammonia (NH₃). Ammonia is used as fertilizer to put nitrogen into soils for plants. Soil nitrogen is needed by most of our major staple crops, in particular, wheat and corn. The Haber-Bosch process, developed in the early 1900s, is thus crucial to all industrial agriculture, whether in wealthy countries or poor ones.

The Haber-Bosch process affects more than just food supplies. It also affects the environment. Indeed, humanity grows so much wheat, corn, and other nitrogen-needing crops that our use of nitrogen fertilizer is significantly altering the planet’s nitrogen cycle. This has major environmental consequences. Here are two:

Energy Consumption

The chemistry of the Haber-Bosch process requires high pressure and temperature, which in turn requires a lot of energy. Given this and the large scale of global nitrogen fertilizer production, the process uses about 1% of total world energy consumption. Most of this energy is from fossil fuels. Fossil fuel supplies are limited, and any system dependent on them is unsustainable. If humanity's agriculture remains dependent on the Haber-Bosch process and on fossil fuels, then, eventually, we may struggle to feed ourselves.

Algal Blooms

An algal bloom is a high concentration of algae found in both inland and oceanic waters worldwide. How are algae blooms connected to nitrogen fertilizer? First, the nitrogen has to get from the farm to the water. When the fertilizer is applied, a lot of the nitrogen is not taken up by the plants. Much of this fertilizer washes off, finding its way into ponds, lakes, or rivers, which feed into oceans and seas. The nitrogen then accumulates in these waters. Second, nitrogen has to cause algae growth. This happens because nitrogen is often a limiting factor in algae growth. In other words, algae often face a nitrogen shortage such that if only they had more nitrogen, then all the other necessary factors for algae growth would be available, and more algae would grow. When this is the case, and when new nitrogen is introduced from the runoff from farms, then more algae will grow. We see this happening quite often worldwide. The following image of algae in Lake Erie is but one example.

Figure 6.3 NASA image of algal bloom in Lake Erie, USA.

Credit: J. Allen & R. Simmon from NASA’s Earth Observatory (Public Domain)

Other Industrial Processes

The Haber-Bosch process is just one of several industrial processes used in industrial agriculture. Other important processes involve pesticide production, heavy farming machinery such as tractors, and irrigated water distribution systems. Without these processes, our agriculture could not yield as much food as it does. However, just as with the Haber-Bosch process, these other processes have downsides.

One important downside is the sustainability of agricultural water inputs. A lot of industrial agriculture draws on fossil water, which is water that has accumulated gradually over a long time, just as fossil fuels are fuels that have accumulated gradually over a lot of time. Fossil water is often in underground aquifers such as the Ogallala Aquifer beneath the United States Great Plains. The Ogallala has helped the Great Plains produce a lot of food, but the water is depleting, forcing farmers to farm differently.

Finally, the advent of industrialized agriculture also involved changes in both which plants were grown and how they were grown. New varieties of staple crops like wheat, maize (corn), and rice were developed to respond well to fertilizers and other industrial inputs. New varieties played a particularly strong role in the spread of industrialized agriculture to lower-income regions of the world in what is known as the Green Revolution. Indeed, Norman Borlaug, the man often considered to be the “father of the Green Revolution,” was a researcher who developed new varieties of wheat and other crops.

The Green Revolution

Thus far, we’ve been focused on the biological and ecological sides of industrialized agriculture. Now let’s look at the social side by considering one major portion of it: the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution took place mainly in the 20th Century, but to some extent continues to this day.

The essence of the Green Revolution has been to bring high-yield industrial agriculture to the Third World in the 1940s through the 1970s. Now, recall that in Module 5 we said that “Third World” is often an outdated and inappropriate term because it refers to countries outside the capitalist and communist blocs of the Cold War. Here, however, Third World is the appropriate term to use because the Green Revolution was part of the Cold War. Indeed, the term Green Revolution was coined in contrast to the term Red Revolution, which refers to revolution towards communism. Capitalist countries, led by the United States, used the Green Revolution as a means of making Third World countries more supportive of capitalism and less supportive of communism. (As we’ll see later in the module, the Soviet Union made similar efforts.) To be sure, there was also a genuine desire to help the Third World feed themselves. But we should recognize that the Green Revolution had selfish political motivations as well as altruistic motivations. This combination of selfishness and altruism is found repeatedly throughout global development efforts, an observation that follows from a holistic, systems perspective of development that considers all the consequences of development efforts.

The Green Revolution resulted in the adoption of new agricultural practices and technologies in a variety of places around the globe. The most important of those new processes and technologies were newly developed high-yield crop varieties, chemical fertilizers, and mechanization. 

The Green Revolution was highly successful in many regards. Yields in countries like India and Mexico increased dramatically, significantly reducing food security issues in these countries. Furthermore, many of the countries ended up not joining the Communist bloc, which was another core goal of the Green Revolution. But there were also downsides, as would be expected from a program this complex. The overall merits of the Green Revolution remain fiercely debated to this day.

Of all the regions in the world, the one that currently has the least industrialized agriculture system is Africa. For a variety of natural and social reasons, the Green Revolution did not take hold in Africa as strongly as it did elsewhere. For this reason, and because much of Africa continues to struggle with food security, there are ongoing efforts to bring industrialized agriculture to Africa.

Monoculture

One concern often voiced about industrial agriculture, whether in reference to the Green Revolution or otherwise, is that industrial agriculture generally involves monoculture. Monoculture is agriculture in which only one type of crop is grown. It thus has very low biological diversity. Monoculture is well-suited to industrial agriculture because it’s much easier to use heavy farm machinery when the machinery can be customized for one crop. The monoculture-machinery system can be seen in this image of an industrial agriculture landscape:

Figure 6.4 The monoculture-machinery system

Credit: Tractors in Potato Field by Nighttree from Wikimedia is licensed under (CC BY 2.0)

But monoculture also has disadvantages. For example, when one crop is grown repeatedly in an area, it will deplete one set of nutrients from the soil. It was mentioned above that grain crops like maize and wheat deplete nitrogen from the soil, and that this depletion drives the usage of industrial nitrogen fertilizer as produced by the Haber-Bosch process. But some plants, such as legumes, fix nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil. Legumes include beans, peas, soy, and peanuts. When these plants are grown around grain plants, less nitrogen fertilizer is needed. This is beneficial because fertilizer can be expensive and can harm ecosystems. However, when different types of plants are grown together, it is more difficult to use heavy machinery.

Another disadvantage of monoculture is its yield stability. Yield stability refers to how stable the yield of an agricultural system is over time from one year to another. An agricultural system with high-yield stability will output about the same amount of food each year. An agricultural system with low yield stability will likely output very different amounts of food each year. In brief, the adoption of monoculture farming can cause an agriculture system to be less tolerant of disturbances or perturbations (e.g., pest outbreaks) and less sustainable with higher instability in crop production.

Biologically diverse agricultural systems tend to have more yield stability than does monoculture. This is because when some event happens that could reduce yields, the event typically only affects some of the species within the system. For example, if rainfall is unusually low one year, but some of the crops planted are well-suited to low rainfall, then those plants will have high yields. If rainfall is high the next year, then those plants will have low yields, but other plants will have high yields, making up for it. So, no matter how much rain falls each year, there will be some crops with high yields, and thus a fairly stable total yield. In contrast, if the system has less diversity, and all of the crops are well-suited for one specific amount of rainfall, then the yield will be either very high (if that specific amount of rain falls) or very low (if some other amount of rain falls). Thus, less diverse systems have less stability.

A striking historical example of the importance of biodiversity to yield stability is the Irish potato famine. In this example, low biodiversity led to a catastrophically low yield.

Consider This: The Irish Potato Famine

In the mid-1800s, many people in Ireland were trying to support themselves and their families on very small pieces of land – often just a few acres. For them, the only crop that could provide enough calories was the potato. And so, they planted lots of potatoes and not much else. This was a very difficult livelihood, but it was largely feasible.

Then, in 1845, potato blight made its way to Ireland from the United States. The blight was devastating to the potato crop, destroying as much as a third or half of it. The consequences for the Irish people were catastrophic. The people hit the hardest were those whose agriculture was focused mainly on growing potatoes – the people whose agriculture had very little biodiversity. To make matters worse, these people already faced very difficult living conditions. With the devastation of their potato crops, they had little else available to survive.

The potato blight caused a great famine, affecting a large portion of the Irish people. By the end of it, the island’s population fell from 8 million to around 6 million. About one million people died, and another million people emigrated to other places. Cities on the east coast of the United States, such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, all gained large Irish populations which they retain to this day.

Figure 6.5 Great Irish Famine Memorial at Penn's Landing, Philadelphia

Credit: Irish Immigration by Art Poskanze from Flickr is licensed under CC BY 2.0

It is important to understand that the causes and consequences of the famine were both ecological and social. The famine would not have occurred if the blight did not affect potatoes so severely, or if Irish agriculture had more biodiversity. The lack of biodiversity there was largely due to the social factors that caused people to have such small plots of land to farm. Meanwhile, the blight was introduced to Ireland through a social process: shipping across the Atlantic Ocean. Originally, the potato itself was introduced via trans-Atlantic shipping as well (the potato is native to South America). Finally, the consequences of the famine would have been different if there was different support for the people affected by the blight. There was some support, which saved lives; this support could have been greater or lesser. Thus, the case of the Irish potato famine illustrates both the importance of biodiversity to yield stability and the idea that agriculture is a coupled human-environment system.

Thus far in the module, we have focused mainly on plant crops, but livestock is a hugely important component of the food-agriculture system. It is important for several reasons, including its inputs, its environmental impacts, its nutritional significance, and for the unique ethical issues it raises. Many of the social and environmental impacts of livestock are metaphorically dark, which is why livestock is referred to as having a large shadow. The phrase Livestock's Long Shadow comes from a report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which we'll get a glimpse of below.

Inputs to Livestock

Many livestock animals graze on natural plant life, such as in the commons discussed in Module 4, but in today’s agriculture system, the majority of livestock animals are fed plants that are grown by humans. There are so many livestock animals around the world that, between grazing and plant feed, livestock takes up a very large amount of the planet’s land. The need to feed plants to livestock animals is another main reason why livestock is such an important issue. In short, we could either eat our plant crops ourselves, or we could feed the plants to livestock animals and then eat meat, eggs, and dairy from the animals:

Figure 6.6 Interdependence of Livestock, Plant Crops and Humans. 

Credit: © Penn State University is licensed under CC-NC-SA 4.0

In other words, livestock animals are higher up the food chain than plant crops are. This means that livestock needs two sets of inputs: the inputs for the animals and the inputs for the plants that they eat. In the case of carnivorous livestock animals, there would be a third or fourth set of inputs. Furthermore, animals are much less than 100% efficient at converting plant food into animal food. This means that we’ll need more than one unit of plant food as input for every unit of livestock food that we get out from it. So, a diet based on livestock will actually require more plant crops than a diet based on plants. This, in turn, means that all of the ecological and other impacts of growing plants will be amplified when we base our diets on livestock animals instead.

Environmental and Health Impacts of Livestock

Some of the key environmental impacts of livestock come from the large inputs of plant food that they require. The impacts of plant crops include land usage, changes to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles from fertilizer, and consumption of energy and water resources. There are also environmental impacts of livestock that come from the animals themselves. This includes the wastes produced by the animals, in particular manure and urine.

Factory Farms

Factory farms are also known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). A factory farm is a livestock farm designed to maximize the output of livestock products per unit cost. It is industrial agriculture for livestock.

Figure 6.7 A Factory Farm of Hogs

Credit: Hogs Confinement Barn Interior from Wikimedia (Public Domain)

Livestock Animal Treatment

As indicated in The Meatrix video, a major issue raised by livestock is in the treatment of livestock animals. These animals are often treated very poorly. If we care about the animals for their own sake, then we will care about how they are treated in factory farms and elsewhere. This relates to the ethics concepts of speciesism and anthropocentrism as discussed in Module 3. On speciesism, philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote, The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

For better or worse, there is quite a lot of suffering experienced by livestock animals, especially those in factory farms. Because of this, there are people who advocate against consuming the products of factory farms. If we boycott these products, then the animals’ conditions will change. This, combined with the environmental and public health impacts of livestock, are two primary reasons that some people choose vegan or vegetarian diets, or reduce their consumption of animal products within an omnivorous diet. We’ll discuss food choice later in this module, but for now, please consider the issues raised by your own choices of which foods to eat.

Nutrition

Thus far, this module has focused mainly on agriculture, i.e., on the production of food. Now we’re going to look at a main end use of food: nutrition. Nutrition here refers broadly to all of our bodies’ physiological needs that we must get through food, including water, energy, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Without proper nutrition, we will be frail, sick, or even dead. Nutrition is thus a crucial end use of food, though it is not the only end use. Nutrition also has important environmental and social components.

Basic Nutritional Needs

While different people can have somewhat different nutritional needs, there are broad similarities across all humans.

One important point to see from the Healthy Eating Pyramid is that animal-based foods (meat, dairy, eggs) should, in general, be eaten less frequently than plant-based foods. This is an important insight, especially when considering the other issues associated with animal-based diets. At stake here is the following: Is eating fewer animal foods a collective action problem? As the previous page in the module showed, there are societal problems associated with animal foods. If animal foods are good for us individually, then there could be collective action problem. On the other hand, if animal foods are bad for us individually, then there would be no collective action problem, and eating fewer animal foods would be a win-win situation for individuals and for society. Nutritionally, eating fewer animal foods can be good for us individually. But remember, nutrition is not the only end use of food. We should not forget that many individuals enjoy the taste of animal foods, or have other reasons for consuming them.

Famine

A famine is an event in which many people lack adequate food and in turn adequate nutrition, often resulting in significantly higher death rates. Famines – and, more generally, hunger – continue to this day. This can be seen, for example, in the Fighting Famine section of World Food Programme website. The World Food Programme is a division of the United Nations dedicated to providing humanitarian food aid around the world.

Note that a famine specifically involves lack of access to food; it does not necessarily involve lack of food. Indeed, in many cases, famines have occurred despite there being no overall food shortages. The food may be located in the wrong place, or it may simply be too expensive to be purchased by those in need. Such cases were described in the article In Corrupt Global Food System, Farmland is the New Gold earlier in the module. Please revisit this article to identify cases of famine and hunger. If famine can be caused by lack of funds to purchase food, then poverty can cause famine, or at least it can be a major factor in a famine system.

Famines can also be caused intentionally by human activities. For example, during World War II, the German army waged what is known as the Siege of Leningrad. Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, is a large Russian city located on the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia. The siege lasted almost 900 days from 1941 to 1944. During this time, the city was cut off from supplies and a famine ensued. About 1.5 million people died, making the siege one of the larger famines in human history, although certainly not the largest.

Finally, famines can be caused by environmental factors. One environmental factor has already been discussed in this module: plant diseases, such as the potato blight that caused the Irish potato famine. Livestock animal diseases can also decrease food supplies, but typically not as much as plant diseases because it’s easier to obtain nutrition without animals than it is without plants. Two other major environmental contributors to famines are droughts and floods. Indeed, droughts and floods are commonly implicated in famines around the world. There have even been famines caused by large volcanic eruptions, because the ash enters the sky, blocking sunlight. 1816 is known as the “year without summer” across the northern hemisphere because of the eruption of the Mount Tambora volcano in Indonesia. We’ll further discuss environmental causes of famines in Module 8 on natural hazards.

Obesity

Nutrition problems can also occur when there is too much food, as seen in the incidence of obesity. Obesity rates in many parts of the world have become so high that there is talk of an obesity epidemic. It might seem odd or inappropriate for the world to simultaneously have widespread hunger and widespread obesity, but that is the case in today’s world. Out of a total population of about 8 billion today, there are about 1 billion undernourished (hungry) people and about 500 million obese people, though note that there is no single precise way to determine who is or isn’t undernourished or obese.

The causes of obesity are complex and relate to more than just food and nutrition. For example, exercise is also an important factor, as might be the quality of the calories consumed. Genetics may also play a factor, as may the chemicals used to treat and package our food known as endocrine disruptors. More research is needed before we have a definitive idea of all the different factors that contribute to obesity, but needless to say, it appears that the causes are multiple.

Relevant to this module, obesity has been connected with industrialized agriculture. Our industrial agriculture system produces large quantities of grains, in particular, maize. These high-calorie crops lead to high-calorie foods, including sugary foods made with high fructose corn syrup. This agriculture system also produces large quantities of animal foods, which can be higher in certain fats, as indicated by the Healthy Eating Pyramid.

Food Choice and Policy

Given all that we have learned about food and agriculture, what should we do about it? Which foods should we as individuals choose? Which policies should societies implement? These questions represent individual and collective action on food and agriculture.

Food Choice

Many factors are relevant to which foods we should choose for ourselves. We may want proper nutrition, tasty meals, convenience, and low cost. We might want the cultural meaning associated with certain foods, such as foods from certain parts of the world or certain religious traditions. We might also care about the impacts our foods have on other people, on the environment, and on livestock animals. There may be other relevant factors as well.

One way or another, which foods we should choose is an ethical question. The more altruistic we are, the more likely we are to care about the impacts of our foods on others, and vice versa if we are selfish. If we are speciesist, then we are unlikely to care about impacts on livestock animals. If we are anthropocentric, then we are unlikely to care about impacts on the environment, except to the extent that the environmental impacts affect people. If we care about distributive justice, then we may choose foods that leave more food available for others.

Sustainable Food Consumption

Like the term sustainability, sustainable food consumption has been defined in various ways. In general, we define sustainable food consumption as choosing food which is good for health and the environment. For food consumption to be sustainable, it has to do “more and better with less”: we obtain more nutrition from food while minimizing the use of natural resources and environmental impacts. Sustainable food consumption is often exemplified by a locavore who eats locally grown or produced food. But a word of caution: food grown or produced locally, or bought from farmer’s markets, is just as likely to be grown using unsustainable and environmentally harmful inputs like chemical pesticides and fertilizers as food at the grocery store. And while local food may travel fewer food miles (i.e., the distance food takes on its way to consumers from producers), its production may generate just as much greenhouse gas as food produced further away. BUT, there is one sustainability advantage that eating locally grown produce from a farmer's market does offer: you can meet the farmer and ask them how they run their farm. This allows you to be an informed and (more) sustainable consumer. Who would you ask at the grocery store?

Recall the concept of commodity chains from Module 1. Now, think about where you can place yourself on the food supply chain and why concerns about where food comes from and how it gets to your plate matter. To fully embrace the idea of sustainable food consumption, changing what we eat is just as important as changing where it is from. In the Livestock's Long Shadow section of this module, we looked into the environmental impacts of consuming meat and dairy products and explained why a plant-based diet leads to a more sustainable environment.

The following video highlights the hidden environmental and social costs of hamburgers. Here are some questions to consider as you watch the video (7:52):

• Are contemporary food production and consumption sustainable?
• Does geography matter to food availability and food choice?
• Are there other steps or efforts toward sustainable food consumption?
• Can sustainable food consumption be promoted through creating social norms?

Food choice, climate change, and sustainability are closely related. Fundamental changes in food consumption and diet are essential for achieving sustainabilty. Just as you must develop your own intuition about ethics, you must decide for yourself which foods you think you should choose. This module aims to help inform your choices, not to make them for you.

Food Policy

Which food (and agriculture) policies society should choose also is an ethical question, one that members of society must come together to decide. Here are some major issues in food policy.

Agriculture Subsidies

Many countries, in particular the wealthier ones, heavily subsidize agriculture. In the United States, agricultural subsidies are about $15 billion per year, or roughly 0.5% of the total federal budget. Corn receives the largest subsidy, about $4 billion. These subsidies help keep agriculture yields high and food prices low. The subsidies significantly decrease the risk of famine and keep countries more self-sufficient in food, which can be important if any geopolitical instabilities occur. On the other hand, the subsidies can cause excessive amounts of food production, leading to increased environmental damage and obesity. The low prices can also hurt farmers in countries that don’t have subsidies. Poor, small-scale farmers in poor countries are put at a great competitive disadvantage by the subsidies of rich countries, despite the fact that labor costs are much lower for the poor. Finally, the money used for subsidies could go to other public or private purposes if the subsidies weren’t there. While lobbyists from the agriculture industry fight hard to keep subsidies, there is much controversy and debate about whether the subsidies should be maintained.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

If you live in the United States, you have probably eaten GMOs on a fairly regular basis. Humans have been modifying the genetic makeup of organisms since the early days of agriculture, simply by selectively breeding plants and animals with desirable traits. Over time, this shifts the genetic makeup of the plants and animals. However, in recent years humans have learned how to manipulate genetics more aggressively, including by inserting genes from one organism into that of another. For example, plants have been genetically designed to be resistant to certain pesticides. The design work is often performed by the same company that sells the pesticides. GMOs are controversial for several reasons and recent years have seen a growing debate over labeling for genetically modified products. Their long-term health and ecological effects are poorly known with no adequate testing, though short-term health effects are generally negligible. Once the new genes are released into fields, they can spread widely and are almost impossible to contain. Finally, the genes are often patented by the companies that design them, giving the companies extensive legal power over certain types of life. World regions are divided on the merits of GMOs. In particular, Europe has been much more hostile to them than the United States, leading to major international trade disputes.

Food vs. Fuel

As concerns mount about the sustainability of energy resources, there are more and more efforts to produce fuels from farmed plants, known as biofuels. Brazil has been particularly active in producing biofuels, in part because its land is well-suited to growing sugarcane. Brazil and the United States produce about 90% of the world’s biofuels. But biofuels are controversial because they result in reductions in the amounts of food available. This controversy is especially large because, in general, it is the rich who can afford the fuel and the poor who need the food. The thought of some people going hungry so that other people can have biofuels for their cars is a difficult ethical debate for many people involved in the issue.

Sustainability

The overall sustainability of human society is a major policy issue, and the sustainability of agriculture is too. Some key aspects of sustainable agriculture have already been discussed. The use of fossil fuels and fossil water cannot be sustained as these resources are depleted. Agriculture systems with low yield stability are vulnerable to disturbances in which yields are not sustained. Other important aspects of sustainable agriculture include agriculture's connections to climate change and biodiversity, which will be discussed later in the course. A lot is at stake with sustainable agriculture: if our agriculture system cannot be sustained in some form, then we will end up without food to eat, and we will face catastrophic declines in the human population and civilization.

Summary

In this module, we covered some of the key concepts and debates related to food and agriculture systems. We have reviewed how industrial agricultural has fed large portions of the human population while having other major environmental and social impacts. We have considered some unique issues posed by the use of livestock animals. We have explored connections between food, agriculture, and nutrition, including challenges such as famine and the obesity epidemic. We have examined some individual and collective action issues associated with food, agriculture, and sustainability.

You may have begun this course taking much of what you find on your grocery store shelves for granted. After working through this module, it is hoped that you now better understand what processes and issues are behind keeping these shelves stocked and how important these issues are today and for the future. Finally, it is hoped that this will serve as a foundation from which you will be able to decide for yourself what role you could play in sustainable practices related to the food you eat.