Shoppers, Stores, Food Processers And Farmers Should All Be Involved In Developing Sustainability

A lot is said and written about sustainability, usually in the context of the farming, food supply and economic worlds, but pinning down what it actually means and actually achieving it can be more challenging.

In farming terms it means farmers using a combination of environmentally friendly and energy efficient practices that are integrated to protect the soil's fertility, reduce crop loss from pests and diseases, while maintaining or increasing yield.

There is a variety of methods to do this that ranges from the traditional and well established, such as planting cover crops that can conserve moisture and be ploughed back in to increase nutrients in the soil, to switching from the older generation chemical fertilisers to newly developed low-chemical agricultural products that have been derived from naturally-occurring substances.

Biopesticides developers are increasingly coming up with a range of these products, including biopesticides, biofungicides and yield enhancers that can be made available to farmers once they have been tested, registered and licensed for use.

However, sustainability is also about minimising waste beyond the farm and reducing the carbon footprint of transporting foods from farm to processor to store.

The most recent estimates on household food waste in the UK come from shoppers themselves, who estimate that they bin almost 10% of the food bought in their weekly shop and of these 8% admit to regularly throwing away as much as a quarter of their food. This equates to an additional £50 a month to the average shopping bill, or £12bn a year across the UK. However, the problem is not only with the shoppers. The major supermarkets have also been accused by environmental campaigners of throwing away too much food, whichthey claim still safe to eat.

The buying methods of supermarkets have also come under fire recently in not contributing to the efforts to create a more sustainable food creation and distribution system.

During an event held in London recently the agricultural director of Produce World said that the grocery supply chain needs to think long-term and move away from transactional deals if growers are to become more sustainable.

His argument was that sustainable means that something can continue forever. This, he said, meant achieving the right balance with nature, but also for people to be happy and for the financial rewards to be right.

Stores themselves have highlighted the difficulty they face in ensuring sustainability throughout the supply chain. Their efforts have involved everything from trying to set targets to ensure tomatoes are 100% residue free to trying to set up long term partnerships with farmers to audits and assurance schemes to try to ensure sustainability.


Copyright (c) 2011 Alison Withers