This year, in select New York City schools, Foodstream Learn will provide hands-on cooking and gardening programs for K–12 students across all five boroughs. Our in-school and afterschool programs build lifelong skills in nutrition, wellness, and environmental stewardship, while also helping schools implement food waste prevention and share table initiatives that align with the New York City Office of Energy & Sustainability, and Climate Action Day themes of sustainability and waste reduction.
Sustainability has become a buzzword used by policymakers and corporate PR teams, but what is sustainability? The most common definition adopted in 1987 by the United Nations (UN) is the Brundtland Definition. Named after former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, the chair of the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) and the catalyst for the Our Common Future initiative and subsequent report, it defined sustainability simply as:
“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
With that, we will delve into the history of sustainability, sustainable development and its evolution and importance to our modern food systems and lives.
A Brief History of Sustainability
Hans Carl von Carlowitz coined the term “Nachhaltigkeit” (sustainability) In 1713. von Carlowitz, a German logger, proposed that the amount of wood harvested should not exceed the amount of wood that could be regrown. This may seem obvious in the modern context, but this concept led to a new way of thinking about natural resources in the pre-industrial age.
Later that century, British thinker Thomas Malthus argued that human population would outpace food production. Although his predictions didn’t ultimately come true in his time, his ideas left a lasting impression on how scientists, academics and policymakers thought about population and food production. Interestingly, 250 years later the term “malthusian” is still used to describe the relationship between finite resources and population growth.
Fast forward to the 20th century, awareness of the effects of the previous 250 years of industrialization led people to examine the impact of human actions on our environment and the consequences for the future of society and progress. The environmental impact of pesticides, pollution and industry led to the beginnings of the environmental movement.
Sustainability Framework
From the 18th century rudimentary concepts of sustainability to modern policy frameworks, the development of concepts in sustainability are focused on creating systems that last and are able to be reproduced. The modern example used to visualize sustainability is a the three-legged stool.
- Environmental, Economic, Equity: Known as the three pillars of sustainability, sometimes referred to as “ Planet, Profit, People”, they refer to specific aspects of sustainability instead of the broader concept. The different dimensions are used to help measure the specific aspects of sustainability.
- Environmental (Planet): The ability of biological systems to remain healthy, diverse, and productive over time by maintaining ecological integrity.
- Economic (Profit): Economic sustainability involves conducting activities in a way that remains profitable long-term without causing social or ecological harm.
- Equity (People): The impact on the sustainability of human rights, equity, and the well-being of communities,
Sustainability, Food & Agriculture
In the mid-20th century, in the face of a global “malthusian” dilemma, scientists and agriculturalists turned to new techniques to maximize global agricultural outputs. The new techniques used industrial technologies and high-yielding varieties of crops to produce more food than ever before in human history. This new way of agriculture was termed the “Green Revolution”. The green revolution undoubtedly prevented famines and fed billions of people around the world, but the focus on output was not without cost. The use of industrial inputs negatively impacted the environment, especially in developing economies in the Global South. As previously mentioned by Foodstream, industrial agriculture, like industrial meat production, is responsible for deforestation, local environmental degradation and contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions. The legacy of the Green Revolution is still debated by researchers and academics, but has also led to the development of new ideas and techniques for sustainable agriculture. Below are some of the key types of modern sustainable agriculture and food production:
- Regenerative Agriculture: Regenerative agriculture is the practice of improving the soil health of agricultural land by limiting industrial outputs and creating a system that can be self-sustaining.
- Agroecology: The agricultural process of agriculture in coordination with the local ecology. By working within the endemic ecosystem agricultural systems can be more self-sufficient, resilient and less environmentally harmful.
- Permaculture: A design system that integrates sustainable agriculture, landscape design, and ecology to create regenerative human habitats that mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature.
Now that we have established some of the history and concepts in sustainability, in our next installments we will dive into some of the specific concepts in sustainability and why they matter to our modern food systems.
For more information about our sustainability program and our other programs visit us at Foodstream or email us at support@foodstreamnetwork.com
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