Sustainable Agriculture: What Do Our Children Eat? How About the Kids in Finland? Greece? South Korea?

When we think about the concept of sustainable agriculture, we normally contemplate the numerous sad facts about how our food in the U.S. is:

• Planted (often monocropping)

• Irrigated (often with water that comes with great energy footprint, much of which is wasted)

• Fertilized (with chemicals of ever-increasing strength to make up for the depletion we’ve caused in our soil over the years)

• Protected from pests (with chemical poisons, which join the chemical fertilizers, and run off to pollute our waterways)

• Harvested and processed (which removes a great deal of what little nutrition might still be there)

• Packaged (mixed with sugar, processed flour, etc., to form cereals, chicken nuggets (pictured), etc.), and

• Shipped (the average item in a U.S. grocery store traveled 1200 miles to reach our shelves — see good sustainable ag solution here).

Yes, that’s depressing. Not only are the agricultural methods not sustainable, but the food itself is imbalanced and has very little nutritional content.  For readers who may want something uplifting, here’s proof that it doesn’t have to be this way; it’s a comparison of the meals served to our school children versus what kids eat for lunch around the world.