The BBC has just published an excellent article summarizing relationships between food quality for humans, nutrients in farming, and the health of the land we live on: How modern food can regain its nutrients.
We’d add several observations from our work with social entrepreneurs and community enterprisers, scientists and others around the world on this topic, which we call Nourishment Economies and #NutrientValueChains:
– Modern science is recognizing that plants synthesize some additional nutritional compounds depending on growing conditions (e.g. often in response to stressors like pests or water shortages that don’t usually occur in industrialized farming systems), including some antioxidents and immune system boosters, that traditional nutritional studies of farming practices don’t often consider.
– It is not only soil health but also some other natural ecosystem functions, like natural vs. mechanical pollination of plants, that affects how those additional nutritional compounds can reach our foods.
– The ratio cited in the article between our food’s calorie content and its essential nutrient content probably correlates with chronic diseases like obesity or diabetes as well. This is because many people now eat more-than-enough calories (per the article’s discussion of wheat, for example) in order to get barely-enough of the essential nutrients that used to occur more abundantly in our mainstream food systems.
– Improved economics for farmers should not wait on additional nutritional research, but often do require changes in business models (also a difficult task). While more research can certainly help, leading enterprises around the world illustrate farmers cashing in on other benefits of nutritional practices that also enhance soil and ecosystems, including improved watersheds (for use or sale), substantial carbon sales, increased tourism in their communities, and food system resilience in time of crisis (from disease, weather, conflict or more). For example, see the work of our farmer colleagues at Burren Programme in Ireland, or COMACO in Zambia. This is what we call Nourishment Economics, creating an interdependent package of value in health, agriculture, and ecosystem sustainability.
– Within regions, farming for foods with a nutritional focus also taps important cultural norms as part of the social and economic equation. Traditional flavors and practices become valued and serve as incentives, locally and elsewhere. We again see this at play in the examples above, and with some Native American farmers and in France and beyond. This is not only seen as beneficial in most societies, but can also improve nutrition for millions of people in geographically or culturally isolated areas not reached or backstopped by mainstream food systems.
While we agree that more refined research will be immensely valuable at the intersection of farming practices and food quality, there is no reason for businesses, communities, or policymakers to wait on that research before taking action. Big nutritional, economic, and social opportunities are already made clear by the leading innovators in this field.
Thanks for sharing!