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Individual diet changes can't fix the global food system ... To reduce the environmental impacts of food supply chains, government and business must tackle the invisible elements that are often ignored

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Individual diet changes can't fix the global food system ... To reduce the environmental impacts of food supply chains, government and business must tackle the invisible elements that are often ignored

IMAGE A woman selects apples while shopping in the produce section at Whole Foods in New York

The focus on the carbon footprint of food has diverted attention away from invisible impacts that are just as environmentally damaging. Photograph: Stephen Chernin/Getty images Buying locally, choosing certified items, reducing meat and dairy intake: while helpful, these individual efforts aren't enough to ensure that the global food system doesn't trash the planet.

Up to this point, we've been fed simple messages about the scope of the problem, and we've been given specific advice about how we can address it individually. Simplicity and a sense of our own agency are important in communicating messages that can contribute to broader change. But, we must be wary of reducing complex problems into overly-simplified sound bites that gloss over serious aspects of the problem and place too much responsibility on those with the least leverage.

Going beyond carbon calculations

For starters, we must broaden the conversation about what sustainable diets entail. Much of the discussion so far has focused almost exclusively on greenhouse gas emissions – reducing what we eat into calculations about carbon footprints. Certainly, carbon is an important part of the story. According to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the food system is responsible for 20-30% of greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. These are tied to energy use in agriculture, processing and transportation, as well as land clearing, food waste, and emissions associated with livestock rearing.

But the focus on carbon has diverted our attention from other areas of the food system that are just as problematic for the environment. These include: biodiversity loss from mono-cropping; threats to the water supply from over-irrigation; soil fertility loss from over-cultivation; toxin exposure from agricultural chemical use; waste and pollution from processing and packaging of food; and the enormous energy use and infrastructure for cold storage.

The heated debate over food miles illustrates some of the risks of equating the impact of what we eat to carbon emissions alone. Initially introduced as an easy to understand concept to get people thinking about buying local foods, it wasn't long before critics produced calculations showing that locally produced food may contribute more carbon than globally traded foods. Never mind that the foods shipped from afar are typically grown in irrigated monocultures, heavily packaged, and extensively refrigerated before reaching consumers. If it didn't have a measureable carbon impact, it wasn't considered an environmental cost.

Recognising that government and businesses shape consumer choice

It is obvious that as individuals we make choices about what goes into our mouths, but other factors influence these choices. Government health messaging and regulatory frameworks affect consumer choices by shaping both public discourse about what we should eat and the rules that govern the food system. As Marion Nestle, NYU Professor in the department of nutrition, food studies and public health has shown, government policies are themselves heavily shaped by the food industry.

Corporations also have direct influence over consumer food choices, especially as the industry has become more concentrated in recent years. According to the Pew Environment Group (pdf), in the livestock industry the four largest companies in 2010 controlled 51% of the poultry industry, 65% of the pork industry, and 85% of the beef industry in the US. In the retail sector, Consumers International reports that major supermarkets in industrialised countries dominate national food markets (pdf). In the UK, four supermarkets held 76% of the food market share in 2011.

Processed and packaged foods are among the most profitable sectors of the food industry. As Melanie Warner explains in her book, Pandora's Lunchbox, processed food make up around 70% of food consumed in North America, provided by food corporations that dominate the system. These firms promote consumer choice and are happy to let responsibility rest with individuals while simultaneously marketing high environmental-impact foods such as highly-processed breakfast cereals, packaged snacks, meat products and frozen entrees.

Individual awareness and choice do matter, but so does corporate behaviour and the regulatory context that governments put in place along the supply chain. Crafting effective policy to bring about more sustainable diets requires a complete picture of the myriad ways in which the food we eat intersects with the health of the planet – including the processing, refrigeration, packaging and storage that are part of the system. In these less visible parts of the value chain, the role of governments and corporations in shifting diets is far greater than that of individuals.

Simple messages and a sense of individual agency can be powerful motivators in efforts to shift norms, but it's time to move on to a more sophisticated discussion on food-environment linkages, and responsibility for addressing them. We have to face up to both the complexity and enormity of the issue, before it's too late.

Jennifer Clapp is a Canada research chair in global food security and sustainability in the environment and resource studies department at the University of Waterloo, Ontario and a Trudeau Fellow. Caitlin Scott is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo in the environment and resource studies department.

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