Sustainability Concerns in Food Production: A Detailed Analysis

This essay addresses the critical sustainability concerns within the food production industry, emphasizing the necessity of systems thinking for environmental protection. It highlights the significant environmental impacts of food production, including increased greenhouse gases, water extraction, food wastage, and pollution. The scope of food sustainability is defined from agriculture to food processing, involving all consumers as stakeholders. The essay explores environmental concerns like water table depletion, soil contamination, and marine ecosystem instability, as well as social concerns such as food scarcity, poverty, and the exploitation of nature. Economic concerns, including market failure and reduced value of natural resources, are also examined. The reflection underscores the importance of addressing these sustainability challenges to ensure food availability for future generations and advocates for the implementation of systems planning to achieve food sustainability. Desklib offers a wealth of resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to aid students in understanding and addressing these complex issues.

SUSTAINABILITY CONCERNS IN
FOOD PRODUCTION

Thesis Statement
• Systems thinking in environmental protection is
critical in developing solutions to the
sustainability challenges, as the main threat to
sustainable development is caused by various
environmental issues.
• Employing critical thinking, every single issue
threatening the environment must be analyzed,
and must be addressed to by systems thinking,
in order to sustain the Earth’s resources.

Background
• The food production industry has a major impact on
the environment, such as increase in greenhouse
gases, water extraction, food wastage, pollution, etc.
• The scope of food sustainability starts from
agriculture to food processing industry, and the
stakeholders are the consumers of food – literally
everyone (Garnett, 2013) .
• It is highly essential to make the food production
industry sustainable, so that the future generation
has no problem.

Sustainability
• Sustainability is defined by the United nations
as “the ability to meet the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.”
• Food sustainability is the ability of the food
production industry to be self sufficient, as
well as enable the future generations to be
self sufficient .

Schematic Representation
Definition of Food Sustainability
Environmental Concerns
Economic Concerns
Social Concerns
Factors influencing food sustainability
Systems Thinking
Sustainability Management
Challenges to Sustainability Management
Conclusion and Reflection
SUSTAINABILITY CONCERNS IN FOOD PRODUCTION

Environmental Concerns in Food Sustainability
• Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries
• Water table depletion
• Groundwater contamination
• Top-soil contamination
• Soil Erosion
• Marine ecosystem instability
• Production
• Excessive resource consumption
• Environmental pollution
• Unwanted packaging waste
• Consumption
• Resource consumption while cooking/processing
• Food wastage
• Generation of garbage

Social Concerns in Food Sustainability
• Food Scarcity (Clark, Jung, & Lamsal, 2014)
• Poverty
• An unhealthy lifestyle
• Increased diseases
• The Human-Nature relationship
• Exploitation of Nature
• Mass-migration to developed areas
• Apathy to environmental issues
• Exploitation of Human Rights

Economic Concerns in Food Sustainability
• Increased Environmental degradation with
economic rise
• Market Failure
• Externality
• Reduced value to natural resources
• Food supply/demand imbalance
• Nature’s “Tragedy of the Commons”

Bibliography
• Clark, S., Jung, S., & Lamsal, B. (Eds.)(2014).
Food Processing: Principles and Application.
John Wiley & Sons.
• Garnett, T. (2013). Food sustainability:
Problems, perspectives and solutions.
Proceedings of the Nutrition Society , 72(1),
29-39.

Reflection
• Food is an essential survival necessity without which
life on earth is not possible.
• It is essential for us to, extending to the
• The sustainability concerns that plague food
development need to be addressed as early as
possible, to make sure that food is available to the
future generations.
• The efficacy of systems planning must be analysed and
implemented, in order to ensure food sustainability