This is part one of a two-part series on food safety and sustainability.

At what point in time does a plant become food? Why would that moment in time matter, and how would we know when it occurs?

Food, by the nature of its purpose, should nourish the body and not introduce negative health outcomes. Fresh produce is one of the healthiest food categories, supplying vitamins, antioxidants and overall nutrition to support a healthy body. Unfortunately, fresh produce has had its share of food safety-related incidents, highlighting the challenge of producing fresh food in complex ecosystems where even the best efforts to control human health hazards occasionally come up short.

It is difficult to describe the challenges of producing safe produce when the crop system, and item, are subject to uncontrollable forces, such as climate, wind, adjacent land activities—and on a cellular level—bacterial pathogens’ biological adaptations for survival. Simply stated, our food grows where other organisms live.

As a result, productive agronomic systems must coexist with other organisms and communities and acknowledge that food grows in an ecosystem far more complex than the crop tended. Produce food safety is an amalgamation of interdisciplinary research, agronomic practices and thoughtful intention by growers to achieve food safety. The factors needed for food safety are the same as those needed to develop agricultural systems that perpetuate environmental resilience.  When looking at it this way, sustainability and food safety are inextricably intertwined, dependent on the same research, knowledge and understanding of the broader complex ecosystem.

Given the common challenges and scientific characteristics shared between sustainability and food safety efforts, it is unfortunate to hear an increasing narrative that sustainability and food safety goals are at odds with one another. This topic of discussion began to build momentum following produce outbreaks in the early 2000s and has been becoming more frequent as new sustainability programs, certifications and label claims have been introduced and adopted.

Despite the increasing references to the perceived conflict, there are no agricultural practices that are solely “safe” or “unsafe” for any produce item or environment. Instead, there is a spectrum of agronomic practices that can be used to propagate a crop, and all practices may have the potential for hazard introduction and system imbalance, and they ultimately have an impact on the final risk to consumers.

Sustainability: What’s in a name?

Sustainability is an encompassing term with many meanings across businesses, systems and regulations. The concept of sustainability as it applies to business began to form after its appearance on the world stage in the 1987 Brundtland Report, also known as “Our Common Future,” by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development. The Brundtland Report built the foundation for approaching sustainable development in the 20th century and has helped define overall sustainability goals as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

In the decade following the Brundtland Report, businesses across the globe began introducing corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and brought to life concepts, such as the “triple bottom line,” an approach for sustainability that includes the social and environmental impacts alongside the overall financial performance for a company.

Sustainability responsibilities and efforts have grown over the years, with increasing reporting and transparency requirements for both publicly traded companies and privately owned businesses, with efforts generally aligned on establishing reporting requirements at all levels of supply chains and operations.

In recent years, sustainability’s meaning has further expanded to more explicitly incorporate efforts aimed at addressing climate change, resource depletion, social equity, food security and overall community well-being. To address the need for harmonization of sustainability approaches across the globe and industries, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was formed in 1998 to attempt to deliver consistency, a universal framework and language, transparency and accountability around systems for reporting sustainability metrics. As of 2024, GRI houses various sustainability reporting standards and guidelines with each program attempting to capture industry-specific nuance and needs.

In agriculture, sustainability has always been an integral part of a grower’s business plan, even if it was not directly identified or intentionally curated. An agricultural entity that ceases to produce crops productively year-over-year would most certainly not be
a sustainable business, and as such growers have always had to, in some capacity, prioritize resource management to ensure that their land stewardship would ensure the long-term economic productivity of their business.

However, just because farming and sustainability have always been linked, doesn’t mean that they have been optimized for long-term sustainability from a business and/or environmental perspective. As time has progressed, continued scientific learnings and advancements have better characterized the impacts of agronomic practices and have informed the development of approaches that better contribute to promoting and maintaining natural resources.

While all growers consider resource management in some capacity, many in agriculture are quickly selecting practices that specifically foster improvement in soil health, water quality and biodiversity, with the overall goal of establishing agricultural ecosystem resiliency. The critical importance of agricultural resiliency goes far beyond immediate food demands and sustainability programs; resiliency is the core tenet to future generations’ abilities to maintain the ability to sustain populations and continue to thrive.