What comes to mind when you think of sustainable food production? If you’re like many Americans, you probably picture a local farmer’s market, celebrity-branded salad dressing or an organic farmer growing heirloom lettuces and free-range chickens. Now, what comes to mind when you think of industrial food production? Do you envision acres of conventionally grown corn stretching as far as the eye can see? Giant feed lots? Factories that process food into “center aisle” products for the supermarket? When we think about sustainable food production, most people don’t think about solutions coming from Big Business. Yet corporations have the potential to become our biggest ally in meeting SDG 12, the sustainability development goal set forth by the United Nations to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns by 2030. Here’s why Our need to eat poses serious threats to the natural systems that sustain us. Whether it’s small and organic or large and conventional, farming of both livestock and crops already uses up nearly 40 percent of Earth’s non-ice surface and is responsible for 14 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions — more if you count the GHG emissions caused by deforestation, which has largely been driven by agricultural expansion. Agriculture also […]
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