According to Australia Government’s National Food Plan we have a strong, safe and stable food system with a high level of food security. Australia produces far more food than consumed and with the capacity to increase production to take advantage of growing markets in Asia. However, sustainable food is not only about supply and demand. Shocking facts from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry1 reports that:
- 68% Australian adult males are overweight or obese
- 55% Australian adult females are overweight or obese
- 25% Australian children are overweight or obese
- 5.4 million Estimated cases of food borne illness in Australia each year
The topic of sustainable food is complex and broad, encompassing topics such as access to food, hunger, price rises, land scarcity and water restrictions.
Edge has been working with food suppliers, manufacturers and retailers for an extended period of time to increase the uptake of sustainable practices in their industry. Our work has mainly been centered on assessing the environmental impacts along their supply chains and measuring embedded carbon through LCA’s.
Edge wanted to learn more about what the real burning issues are according to media. To that end we undertook a high level research of the current trends and topics in relation to sustainable food, by scouting the web for the main themes that are trending in newspapers and public domain in general.
It is perhaps no surprise that the biggest single trending topic relates to malnourishment (poor diets and obesity) with 25% of hits, followed by topics within the category of General Environmental Protection at 15%. However our findings reveal that Energy Use follow with a 12%, highlighting the importance and close relation of energy usage and food.
With increasing population, decreasing agricultural land availability and a higher percentage of population living in cities, the production, transport and storage of food are causing a higher embedded energy in food, and therefore higher related costs. This is a growing trend, as the aforementioned factors will only increase over time, further compounding this result.