Consider the tomato. The Jekyll and Hyde of the produce world, it could single-handedly convince us to care about where our food comes from and how it was raised. Compare, for example, the sweet goodness of a plump, sun-soaked homegrown versus the pallid, rock-hard specimen that was harvested thousands of miles away, chemically fertilized, picked green and shipped across the globe to your chain grocer.
As more area consumers swarm to farmers markets in the summer and discover just how wonderful the locally grown varieties taste, a byproduct of their awareness is a growing appreciation for sustainable agriculture. Once relegated to the fringes of the food industry, the concept now is gaining momentum in the mainstream.
There is no single definition for sustainable agriculture, according to Gerry Walter, adjunct assistant professor of agricultural communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The term reflects more of an approach to agriculture than any particular set of practices.
“Generally speaking, to be sustainable, a system has to contribute to three goals: It has to make a profit for the farmer, it has to protect the environment and it has to contribute to the local community,” Walter said.
Want one of those fresh, ripe tomatoes? Walter advocates going to local growers at farmers markets or through what is called “community supported agriculture,” a system in which consumers buy directly from a producer. One such farmer is Penny Gioja, who has a dedicated clientele who come to her Joy of Illinois Farm near Champaign for veal, lamb, chicken and other sustainably raised foods.
“[It’s] much better for the environment and the local economy,” Gioja said. “We have customers who are very loyal to us, and I know there are others who are loyal to other farmers. And that’s the way it should be.”
Sustainability is an umbrella concept under which fall many more recognizable terms, such as “organic” and “Fair Trade.”
Walter, who also is the state representative to the regional USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, said that modern technology, though beneficial in many areas of agriculture, also creates many problems.
“Modern commercial agriculture is not always that profitable for the average farmer,” he said. “And it has caused environmental problems and it can be bad for small rural communities.”
“If we could build twenty 50-cow dairies, it would be better for local economies than one 1,000-cow facility,” said Jim Fraley, livestock program director for the Illinois Farm Bureau. “But no one is building anything that small because it is just not cost-effective.”
One of the reasons that large-scale operations are necessary, Fraley said, is that consumers want high-quality food but don’t want to pay for it.
“Food prices at the farm level have not increased significantly for the last 20 or 30 years, but we’ve made up for it with production efficiency by producing more per acre, more pounds of livestock in fewer days,” he said.
Still, it is possible to make smaller operations sustainable. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in coffee farming. A glut on the worldwide market has resulted in prices dropping lower than the cost of production. Across the Third World, where the vast majority of coffee is grown, family-owned farms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate.
“We have thousands and thousands of farmers who are leaving the farms because they can’t support themselves,” said Ted Lingle, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. “That’s one of the principal causes of illegal migration to the United States.”
The specialty coffee industry, which makes up only about 15 percent of the total volume of coffee sold worldwide, has a vested interest in the sustainability of coffee farms. Specialty coffee purveyors pay higher than the market price for coffee, Lingle said.
“But they’re not being altruistic, they’re being sound business people,” he said. By paying more for the coffee, the industry ensures that the farms stay in business.
Other benefits emerge. Specialty coffee often is grown on farms that involve other certification programs from groups such as the Rainforest Alliance, Transfair and the Organic Crop Improvement Association, Lingle added; they “monitor such things as environmental or social responsibility standards.”
Some of these practices are drifting into the mainstream. Northfield-based Kraft Foods recently entered into an agreement with the Rainforest Alliance, an international not-for-profit agency that focuses on improving business practices in order to promote biodiversity, conservation and sustainability.
As part of a multiyear arrangement, Kraft has agreed to purchase more than 5 million pounds of coffee in the first year from farms in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Central America that have been certified by the alliance as sustainably managed.
“We believe that working with Rainforest Alliance will help bring sustainability from the niche market into the mainstream,” said Kraft representative Patricia Riso. “We’ve been in the coffee business for more than 100 years, and we’re dedicated to its long-term success, part of which is maintaining a sustainable supply for future generations.”
While the goals of sustainable agriculture clearly are consistent with good business practices, ignoring those goals can lead to some chilling side effects. This is especially true in livestock production, where once again we find the looming specter of mad cow disease, a disease directly related to factory farming methods.
Down on the factory farm
“Factory farming is the way that animals are raised for food today,” said Diane Hatz of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment.
Although, Hatz said, there are no formal definitions, her group objects to such practices as indoor confinement; sometimes, she said, “the only time [animals] go out is when they’re shipped for slaughter.”
Along with the treatment of the animals, the practice of storing their waste in giant lagoons–a common practice nationwide–is coming under increasing fire from environmental lobbyists. A study from the University of Iowa illustrated their dangers.
“We were concerned about the location of the lagoons in Iowa and found that 18 percent were located in places where they had the potential for direct contact with people’s water supplies,” said William Simpkins, associate professor of hydrogeology at Iowa State University and one of the authors of the study.
“There is the possibility of water contamination by harmful bacteria, nitrates and other organic compounds, and even pharmaceuticals that the farmers have fed their animals,” he said.
Antibiotic concerns
Those pharmaceuticals are often in the form of antibiotics.
According to Hatz, confined animals get sick very easily, which necessitates their being fed a diet of antibiotics. “This is leading to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which means that the antibiotics are no longer working as well on humans,” she said.
All of these concerns are having effects industry-wide. The National Chicken Council, a nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based trade association, has developed what it calls “Animal Welfare Guidelines” as well as an audit checklist with which a company can validate its adherence to those guidelines.
According to its official Web site, the council has been working with industry experts and poultry scientists from leading universities “to ensure the proper care, management and handling of broiler chickens and broiler-breeder flocks.”
Other food animals now are receiving similar respect. Oak Brook-based McDonald’s Corp. has been working with Temple Grandin, associate professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University, to ensure that their slaughterhouses adhere to the highest levels of humane treatment. Grandin developed a scoring system called the American Meat Institute Guidelines, which grades a facility based on how the animals respond to their treatment. Now, she trains auditors to report on and enforce those guidelines.
“McDonald’s started auditing in 1999,” she said, “and it resulted in light years of improvement in the treatment of their animals.”
McDonald’s official Web site boasts of more than 500 such audits in 2002.
“In the beginning it was kind of an abstraction,” Grandin said, “but once you get into the field and you see things going wrong, it all becomes very clear how important this work is.”
Grandin has since gone on to work with other big-name food producers, including Wendy’s, Burger King and Whole Foods Markets.
All of this outside auditing comes with a price tag, however, as anyone who buys certified organic produce knows. This is cause for concern, especially to corporations who have made it their business to offer food to the consumer at an affordable price.
At the checkout
“If food production follows a model that only allows it to be affordable to a certain group of people, is that really sustainable?” asked Ed Nicholson, director of media and community relations for industry giant Tyson Foods.
While this is a fair enough question, it implies that the true cost of food is nothing beyond what we pay for it at the checkout counter. To many, this view is shortsighted.
“When you look at foods grown to sustainable agriculture measures, you see how they try to minimize the effect on the land, whereas conventionally raised products have the potential to have an impact on waterways and air quality as well as the land itself,” said Margaret Wittenberg, vice president of marketing and public affairs for Whole Foods Markets, a leading proponent of sustainability.
Still, for many of us, questions of such a global nature can be hard to answer apart from the context of our own table.
