Sustainability: Sustainable Eaters

Understanding how to support sustainability through our food choices is not simple. Part of the challenge arises from the fact that defining and identifying sustainably produced and distributed food product is nearly impossible. Defining a sustainably produced food is hard enough, even with quantitative ways to measure soil quality and water pollution. But what does sustainability mean when discussing how a product moves through the supply chain? Specific problems are simple to identify: many of the people working in the food industry are the same ones going hungry. Farm workers are at risk of exposure to severe toxic chemical injuries—more so than any other sector of the economy. Each year an estimated 300,000 farm workers suffer pesticide poisoning. This failure to protect rights stems from the reality that our food industry depends heavily on migrant labor. Foreign-born workers account for 81 percent of agricultural labor, while 52 percent are undocumented and unprotected under U.S. labor laws. As a result, immigrant workers are vulnerable to abuse of wages and labor within the industry. But how are these specific problems addressed in a food system?