Germans Get Scientific about Sustainable Food

Back in June, I reported that The Leonardo Academy, an environmental think tank based in Madison, WI, was attempting to define "sustainable" agriculture for the purpose of forming a national certification process, similar to USDA's National Organic Program. The bad news about that project was that the American Farm Bureau Federation was pushing for a very broad definition of sustainable farming, and in particular, they wanted GMO crops to be included.

If that's the direction sustainable certification is going to go in this country, it's not something I can get behind, but according to a new article from US News and World Report, scientists and the University of Munich in Germany are seeking to quantify what exactly makes a set of farming techniques "sustainable." In the German tradition (or at least the stereotypes), it sounds like a very intelligent and efficient system.

"The research question was: How can the sustainability status of farms with available operating data be determined and systematically improved? The goal was very ambitious – to improve the environmental balance of agricultural enterprises without compromising their operating efficiency and social performance. In years of meticulous work to this end, the team of researchers developed indicators and models to analyze, assess and optimize the sustainability of agricultural enterprises.

[...]

"Thanks to their new indicator model, the TUM researchers are now able to describe agricultural enterprises as systems based on their material and energy flows. ... In field tests at 80 farms across Germany, the computer generated "virtual enterprises" and visualized their environmental data using charts and graphs."

When applied to farming, the term "sustainable" is used to mean "regenerative," but in an economic context it describes a business model that is profitable enough that it can continue operating. According to the article, the researchers are also trying to determine the social and economic sustainability of the farms by including such factors as profitability, investment rate, workload and pay rates for workers.

-Mark

Comments

[Heidi Junger]

The German approach is what Oregon Tilth (a US organic certifier, incidentally the one I use for my products) was talking about earlier this year. The goal would be to adjust the National Organic Program so that it includes sustainable values (socioeconomic) other than the existing organic farming and processing standards. GMOs would be out of the question.