Can Eating Sustainably Help Save the Environment?
Oil, coal, and natural gas are collectively known as fossil fuels. Today, eighty-five percent of all energy produced in the United States comes from burning these fuels. That energy powers almost two-thirds of our electricity and virtually all of our transportation.
Fossil Fuels and Industrial Farming
Conventional food production and distribution require a tremendous amount of energy—one study conducted in 2000 estimated that ten percent of the energy used annually in the United States was consumed by the food industry.
Accounting for most of this wasteful equation are the industrial practices upon which our food system is built. These include inefficient growing practices, food processing, and storage, as well as our system of transporting foodstuffs thousands of miles between the field and the end consumer.
Growing Practices
The biggest culprit of fossil fuel usage in industrial farming is not transporting food or fueling machinery; it’s chemicals. As much as forty percent of energy used in the food system goes towards the production of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Fertilizers are synthesized from atmospheric nitrogen and natural gas, a process that takes a significant amount of energy. Producing and distributing them requires an average of 5.5 gallons of fossil fuels per acre.
Food Transportation
Because industrial farming draws on the economy of scale, our food is increasingly grown in concentration in specific areas of the country. The western Plains are wheat country, the Midwest is the Corn Belt, etc.
This national-scale system is possible only because it uses large quantities of fossil fuels to transport food products to the consumer. It is now common practice to ship food not just around the country, but around the world As a result, the average American foodstuff travels an estimated 1,500 miles before being consumed.
Sustainable Farming and Fossil Fuel Savings
The most obvious way that small, sustainable farms help reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels is by selling their products locally. The less food has to travel, the less fuel is needed to transport it. But sustainable farming practices also have the potential to reduce fossil fuel dependence by eliminating wasteful production practices. The USDA estimates that making all our farmland’s irrigation systems just ten percent more efficient would annually save eighty million gallons of diesel gasoline spent on pumping and applying the water.
Sustainable farms also take advantage of animal power to fuel their operations. When animals graze, they feed themselves and spread their own manure. This eliminates the need to truck feed to the animals and then truck their manure out to fields where it is sprayed. Thus the practice of grazing animals on pasture also decreases the amount of fuel used to produce our food.
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What You Can Do
- Buy foods grown locally. The equation is simple: the closer the farm is to you, the less fuel is needed to transport its food to your table. You can find local foods by visiting a local farmers market or by joining a food co-op or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group. And while you’re at it, ask your grocery store to supply locally grown produce.
- Avoid purchasing processed foods. These foods take more energy to produce (and have less nutritional value than whole foods). In addition, choose foods with minimal packaging. This reduces the energy used to produce the packaging and eliminates these materials from the waste stream.
