6.4 agri food industry and its unsustainability

Fabrizio Ceschin, Carlo Vezzoli, Daniel Metcalfe & Hussain Indorewala

Politecnico di Milano / Faculty of Design / INDACO Dept. / Italy

course

SYSTEM DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY

subject

6. Design exercise – sustainable system concept for eating in IIT

Delhi and Guwahati campuses

learning resource

6.4 AGRI-FOOD INDUSTRY AND ITS

(UN)SUSTAINABILITY contributors:

fabrizio ceschin, carlo vezzoli, daniel metcalfe & hussain indorewala

Politecnico di Milano / Faculty of Design / INDACO Dpt. / Italy

LeNS, the Learning Network on Sustainability: Asian-European multi-polar network for curricula

development on Design for Sustainability focused on product service system innovation.

Funded by the Asia-Link Programme, EuroAid, European Commission.



CONTENTS

source available even on LeNS / OLEP

The presentation is based on the work did by TISCHNER, U. & KJAERNES, U., „Sustainable consumption and production in the agriculture and food domain‟, in LAHLOU. S., EMMERT, S. (ed.), Proceedings: SCP cases in the field of food, mobility and housing, Proceedings of the Sustainable Consumption Research Exchange (Paris), June 2007, pp. 201-237

part of the SCORE! EU funded project

1. THE FOOD PRODUCTION-CONSUMPTION CHAIN

2. MAIN ISSUES IN FOOD PRODUCTION-CONSUMPTION CHAIN

3. KEY SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES OF FOOD SYSTEM

4. SUSTAINABLE FOOD?



1. THE FOOD PRODUCTION & CONSUMPTION CHAIN



THE FOOD PRODUCTION & CONSUMPTION SYSTEM

LANDSCAPE Societal, Economical and Technological trends

CONTEXT AND REGIME CONDITION Influence of Policy, Research centres, Media, NGOs…

FARMERS AND CATTLEMEN: Crops and cattle growing (raw food production)

FOOD PROCESSORS: Several stages: Refinement of raw materials, production of end products

RETAILERS: Different types of, also directly from farmer to consumer: Sell food to commercial and private customers

PRIVATE CONSUMERS: Consume food with or without own preparation

COMMERCIAL CUSTOMERS: Prepare food and offer to consumers

CONSUMERS OR OTHER ORGANISATIONS: Remove and reuse food leftovers

CONSUMERS OR OTHERS, MUNICIPALITY: Final disposal/ composting of food waste.

Production and supply of auxiliary materials, machines, packaging etc. by DIVERSE SUPPLIERS

TRANSPORT AND PACKAGING between every production step and normally also at all different stages of processing, retail and between commercial customers and private consumers.



FARMERS AND CATTLEMAN

INDUSTRIALISED FOOD AND GLOBALISATION OF ITS CHAIN

- food production has become an industry: additional processing steps

and intermediaries have been added between farmer and consumer

-conventional agriculture worldwide is still becoming more intensified

with a greater use of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and automated

technical devices

-farms are growing in average size

- food materials are being transported over large distances, being

processed in countries with low labor cost



FARMERS AND CATTLEMAN

FARMERS UNDER PRESSURE (LOOSING POWER IN THE FOOD CHAIN)

- industrial agriculture: farmers are increasing their dependency on

energy and synthetic fertilizer inputs; belong and complex marketing

chain of which they are a tiny part (with big food processors dictating

the prices)



FOOD PROCESSORS

POWER CONCENTRATION IN FEW HANDS

- most of the agricultural goods produced are transformed into food

industry products (e.g. in EU more than 70%)

- in food processing there are fewer and fewer companies sharing the

market, thus power is concentrated in fewer hands in the system



RETAILERS

POWER CONCENTRATION IN FEW HANDS

- fewer and fewer, larger and larger retail chains share the market and

fight mainly using low price policy

- small stores can only survive, if they have special quality products or

services and are innovative, or very much embedded in local culture

and traditions

- often big retailers can dictate prices to agricultural producers and

processors in the mainstream industrial system



CONSUMERS

CONSUMPTION TRENDS

- unhealthy diets (over-consumption of calories per capita in

industrialised contexts, and unbalanced and poor diets in emerging

and low-income contexts)

- consumption of highly processed food (fast and cheap food),

accompanied by a decreasing knowledge about food

- reduction of the average preparation time for meals

- increasing awareness on hunger and obesity/ health aspects of food

- declining trust in food safety



CONSUMERS

CONSUMPTION CONTRA-TRENDS

- slow food movement, to preserve and strengthen the cultural cuisine

and tradition, safeguard the local food plants and seeds, and small

local farmers and food producers (in industrialised contexts)

- increasing organic food consumption

- increasing awareness (in industrialised contexts) of fair trade

relationships with stakeholders in emerging and low-income contexts



CONSUMERS, MUNICIPALITY & OTHERS

DISPOSAL

- it depends from context to context; in industrialised contexts the

separate collection of rubbish (organic, plastic, metal, glass &

undifferentiated) is generally diffused and effective

- problem of food disposed because has not been consumed (food

remnants) or because it has gone out-of-date (high quantity in

industrialised contexts)



2. MAIN ISSUES IN AGRI-FOOD SECTOR



“If you are what you eat, and especially if you eat industrial food, as 99% of Americans do, what you are is corn...” Michael Pollan

Cereals like corn and soya are crops that are easy to be industrialized, and therefore are taking the place of many traditional crops, reducing biodiversity.

The access of these cereals in industrial countries is diverted towards the livestock industry (and later to the biodisel industry).

Industrial agriculture on mono cultures is highly dependent on artificial fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, pesticides which are the main cause of water and soil Pollution.

A. Moving towards cereal mono-culture crops



150 Kg

700-1000 Kg

Industrial

Direct consumption

Animal products

Alcohol drinks

Industrial products

cereal consumption

(Kg of cereals consumed in one year per capita)

there is an over-production of cereals, but each person cannot eat more than 150 kg in one year.

for this reason cereals are used to feed livestock (even if this is not the natural feed for some animals), produce industrial drinks and other industrial food.

A. Moving towards cereal mono-culture crops



agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer

19% for the operation of field machinery

16% for transportation

13% for irrigation

08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)

05% for crop drying

05% for pesticide production

08% miscellaneous

(energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not considered in these figures)

high quantity of liters of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each person (in a industrialised country (US) ~ 250.00 liters).

B. Fuel dependency



C. Meat industry and un-sustainability “Meat production is the most important contributing factor to the unsustainability of food in Western countries. We have known for a long time that in terms of using natural resources, a lot is lost by feeding animals with food, which we could actually eat directly ourselves”.

Animal protein production requires more than 8 times as much fossil- fuel energy than production of plant protein. Energy input to protein output ratio of beef is 54:1, of lamb is 50:1, for eggs its 26:1, for pork its 17:1, for milk protein 14:1, for turkey meat it is 13:1, and finally chicken meat is 4:1.

Some data (industrialised comntexts):

Meat and dairy production account for 13.5% of total GHG emissions in the EU25. Agriculture accounts for 80% and livestock production alone consumes 50% of all water used in the U.S.



D. Genetic Modified Organism (GMO) Corn and soya were the first crops to be genetically modified, and by the year 2000 more then half of corn and soya grown in the US was genetically modified.

Strong multinational companies lobby for GMO (farmers are dependent from these companies because GMO plants often yeld sterile seeds.

GMO seeds can contaminate regular crops.

There is also the possibility that GMOs could introduce new allergens into foods, or contribute to the spread of antibiotic resistance.

The risk connected to the use of GMO seed, for environment and human health, is however unclear. Nevertheless there should be the adoption of the “precaution” principle.



4. KEY SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES OF FOOD SYSTEM



NOT ENOUGH LAND FOR FEEDING THE WORLD’S POPULATION

- it is expected that in 2050 9 billion people would require between

1.8 and 2.2 Earth-sized planets in order to sustain their

consumption of crops, meat, fish, and wood

- the problem here is not (only) the growing population but

(especially) the very unsustainable mainstream conventional

industrialised production and consumption system

ENVIRONMENTAL PROFILE OF FOOD SYSTEM (mainstream industrialised conventional food chain)



- the main environmental impacts are determined by the PRIMARY

PRODUCTION STAGE (growing crops and cattle); these impacts are

due to land and pesticide use, over-fertilisation and energy

consumption for inputs such as agricultural equipment cattle fodder

- (for energy use) there are relevant contributions from: MEALS

PRODUCTION, STORAGE (cooling) and TRANSPORTATION

- (for energy use) PACKAGING generally contributes less than 5% to

the total energy consumption

- SEPARATE COLLECTION OF RUBBISH (organic, plastic, metal, glass

& undifferentiated) is generally diffused in industrialised contexts

- problem of FOOD LOSSES that are disposed because have not been

consumed (food remnants) or because it has gone out-of-date

ENVIRONMENTAL PROFILE OF FOOD SYSTEM (mainstream industrialised conventional food chain)



Environmental dimension

BIODIVERSITY

- habitats and species are under increasing threat from intensive

agriculture due to the emphasis on increasing yields



HAVING GOOD FOOD FOR ALL

- Having enough healthy food for all: this is a key problem both in

emerging and low industrialised contexts (where people often have

to little food and/or unbalanced diets), and in industrialised contexts

(where people often get diseases related to over-consumption and

unbalanced diets)

Socio-ethical dimension




FAIR TRADING RELATIONSHIPS

Between the different stakeholders of the value chain.

- We have to consider the relations between farmers on one hand,

and food processing companies and supermarket chains on the

other

- Between the North and the South of the world the problem is

between small scale producers in the South and big multinational

corporate buyers from the North




CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND FOOD TRADITIONS

- Another issue to be considered is the continuing loss of cultural

diversity and food traditions, mainly caused by the one-dimensional

food offers determined all around the world by multinational food

producers




INFORMATION AND TRANSPARENCY IN RELATION TO THE FINAL

USER

- Sometimes the complexity of the food chain determines for

consumers the difficulty in gathering information on the involved

stakeholders, and so in having information (for example about

trading relationships with farmers in the South, animal conditions,

use of GMO, etc.). Therefore it is quite hard for consumers to take

responsibility of their choices and behavior.



4. SUSTAINABLE FOOD?



DEFINING SUSTAINABLE FOOD

“sustainable food consumption can be defined as access and use by

all present and future generations of the food necessary for an

active, healthy life, through means that are economically, socially

and environmentally sustainable.”

Lefin (2008)



DEFINING SUSTAINABLE FOOD

“Food consumption and its sustainability cannot be considered as

such, but in a broader system including the production, processing,

transportation, packaging, preparation, and disposal of food, each of

the various stages being possibly analyzed both in terms of their

impact on the environment and on human health.

The goal cannot be to reduce consumption of food as much as

possible, but to figure out which kinds of food, produced and

processed where and in what way, prepared how and by whom,

consumed, digested, with leftovers disposed off or even reused in

what way etc. are the most sustainable options for different regions

and cultures, different productions systems and consumers/

citizens.”

Tischner and Kjaernes (2007)

Technology

6.4 agri food industry and its unsustainability