A Critical Examination of Sustainibility

The concept of sustainability, and the rhetoric surrounding it, has captured the attention of the public, with good reason. It’s simple, vague, and promises a bright future that requires little sacrifice of comfort or convenience. The idea of sustainability responds to very valid anxieties within the public sector about human-suffering due to environmental issues. It allows us to imagine a beautiful utopian future that can be achieved by practicing conscious consumerism. This idea disregards the realities that we will face in the future due to global climate change, and the amount of work it will take to substantially improve humanity’s relationship with the earth. Sustainability is a complicated and often misleading label. Critically examining the blanket concept of sustainability in order to compose a clear picture of it, unearths many contradictions to the values of the sustainability movement.

If they have the means, consumers will pay more for products marketed as greener or eco-friendly. In return, they receive the comfort that they made the conscious choice for the health of themselves, their families, and the planet. Marketing companies are acutely aware of this, so the label of “sustainable” becomes a badge of the higher class, a symbol of safety, and an effective marketing ploy. The label of sustainable on food products addresses anxieties that are beginning to form within certain sectors of the public around treatment of workers in food production, genetic modification, pesticide use, and the future of agriculture.

Sustainable agriculture practices seek to address these fears. Agronomy for Sustainable Agriculture: A Review states,

“serious terrestrial issues about food show clearly that conventional agriculture is no longer suited to feeding humans and preserving ecosystems.”

While sustainable agriculture seeks to fix perceived flawed systems in production, it also leaves questions to be answered about whether the solutions is presents are truly effective on a large scale.

The effectiveness and implementation of sustainable agricultural practices is very difficult to quantify. No-till agriculture is a popular alternative to conventional agriculture that is thought to increase soil fertility and crop yield, while sequestering carbon in the soil. It is commonly associated with environmentally focused intentions described in the New York Times op-ed piece Soil Power! The Dirty Way to a Green Planet. According to the Food and Agriculture Association, no-till agricultural practices are being used on up to 70% of cultivated areas. However the application of no-till agriculture is not synonymous with eco-friendly. In his book “Soybeans and Power” Pablo Lapegna explains that farmers who grow Genetically Modified, pesticide resistant soybeans have no need to till the soil due to the mass quantities of harmful pesticides that are used to kill weeds. The goals of farmers who use no-till agriculture as a technique to increase soil fertility and reduce atmospheric carbon levels are substantially different that a farmer to does not till his field because he kills his weeds with chemicals. However both practices are named “no-till agriculture”. Although no-till agriculture has been labeled “sustainable”, the reality of it is much more complicated. When used in the right way, no-till agriculture truly has the potential to sequester substantial amount of carbon in the soil, increase crop yields, and reduce flooding and erosion. However conventional agriculture and no-till agriculture can have equally positive or negative effects on the environment depending on what context they are used in.

There are many inconsistencies within the discipline of “sustainability”. In What on Earth Is Sustainable? Miriam Greenberg comments on the holes in the sustainability movement.

“The movement pursues many of the same, relatively narrow sustainability goals as alternative food. This includes a do-it-yourself focus on localism and small-scale farming, rather than on broader injustices within the California food system such as workers’ exposure to toxic chemicals, chronically low wages, and expanding informal settlements in the agricultural belts of the Central Valley and Imperial Valleys—where the most rapid urbanization in the state is occurring.”

Much of the sustainability movement takes the treatment of humans and animals for granted. Those who support it buy meat products that are labeled as free range, cage free, or grass fed. These labels can be very misleading. For example, cage free often means poultry is kept in cramped huge warehouses with poor ventilation and hardly any room to move. Yet the absence of cages allows meat to acquire a label that suggests it the animals were raised humanely. Regarding workers rights Greenberg states,

“Perhaps not surprisingly, environmental justice outside of the Bay Area—in eco-dystopian Southern California and the Central Valley—has been more linked to the labor movement and more engaged in farm worker and environmental health issues.”

Sustainability movements shift character and focus based on their location and the populations that support them. They are constantly developing and changing. Positive changes have undeniably risen from the sustainability movement. However we must remember it is not the be-all-end-all solution to our environmental issues. Moving towards some idea of “sustainable living” is not a worthless pursuit. However we must keep in mind the complexities and inconsistencies that undermine it and continue to develop new and better way to live on this planet.

Lapegna, Pablo. 2016. Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental Politics, and social movements in Argentina. New York: Oxford University Press.