nicoles blog march 09
Is our food costing the earth?
I wanted to share with you a lecture event I recently attended called Eating the Future: How should we eat to ensure a sustainable future? It was run by the Institute of Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney www.isf.uts.edu.au It was hosted by Professor Stuart White, Director of the Institute, and featured presentations from a nutritionist colleague Rosemary Stanton, and Dana Cordell, PhD scholar at the institute. Rosemary gave a very nice overview of the issues and practical actions we could take to eat in a more sustainable way, such as consuming less, reducing waste, favouring plant foods, favouring smaller animals as food, choosing minimally processed and packaged food, boosting funding for organic farming research, and discouraging food crop diversion to ethanol for fuel. She also encouraged the audience to do more lobbying of politicians to encourage government action on these issues.
For me, the biggest news flash came from Dana’s presentation, which added a new ‘peak’ to our collection ‘peak oil’ and ‘peak water’ – peak phosphorus. In short, phosphorus is a finite resource the world has become addicted to for intensive agricultural production but is due to run out in the next 50-100 years (depending if action is taken). For added relevance here at home, Australia’s soil is naturally phosphorus deficient, yet we have built our nation on phosphorus-intensive production of beef, wheat and wool. To add a further sinister edge to the story, 90% of the world phosphorus rock (an internationally traded commodity) is controlled by 5 countries – the biggest being Morocco and West Sahara, followed by China and South Africa. All this, yet phosphorus scarcity is not on the priority agenda for global food security, such as with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the World Health Organisation. The proposed solutions appear to be recovering phophorus from crop, food and excreta waste; reducing our demand for phosphorous through agricultural efficiency and less phosphorous-demanding diets; and creating healthier soils through ‘unlocking’ phopshorous already present. Check out more about this at www.phosphorus-futures.net
What can you do?
- Raise the issue of ‘Peak Phosphorus’ with your local politician
- If you can afford it, choose locally grown organic produce (it uses less phosphorous fertiliser)
- Reduce the amount of food you waste by buying only what you need and composting food scraps
- Base your diet on mostly plant foods (with require less phosphorous, energy and water to produce)
- Regard meat as a garnish to be savoured in small amounts rather than the foundation of your meals -this is better for your health, and requires less phosphorous