What exactly are sustainable jobs – #1 food

As pundits are looking for signs of the “green shoots of recovery” there are two paths we can take in terms of  jobs.

1. Sustainable jobs

2. Unsustainable jobs.

Many sustainable jobs are possible in the food, agriculture, water, energy, forestry, clothing and social sectors.  At present almost all of these jobs as well as many of our discressionary and luxury items come into the “unsustainable” category due to their energy and waste impact as well as the pollution and workers rights issues which apply to them.

Food

To address global food security (which becomes a crisis as peak water, phosphates and fertilizers approach (nitrates are made from natural gas)) we need to improve efficiency while at the same time eliminating the use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers.   This sounds challenging and it is because it could be more labour intensive.

1. To make it possible to make a living, we need to change the markets by cutting out the midddle man who currently acquires so much of the crust which could be going to farmers and horticulturalists .  This means more local markets.
2. Change of diet towards mainly vegetarian diet is also a requirement (speaking as a non-vegetarian). The reason for this is that land used to produce crops provide much greater yield than land used to produce meat.  Reducing meat consumption is something unpalatible to many people, but we have a choice in this – to do it voluntarily or to let nature force us to do it. This does not mean a loss of jobs in farming nor does it mean enforced vegetarianism. What it means is a transition in production and consumption patterns to less of one and more of the other.
3. Adoption of clever methods of cultivation such as permaculture, row cropping, intercropping, no-till farming (but without the pesticides) and other methods are required to replace the need for pesticides and artifical fertilizers. The reason for reducing pesticides is they are slowly killing us as a race over a number of generations and killing many of the occupants of the food chain on which we are interdependent.  Soil conditioning is interdependent on many things including bacteria, fungi, carbon content, nutrients, trace mineral content, and biodiversity. Pesticides break down this interdependency.

These actions will be difficult to implement without changing the economic system to phase in making  it economical for farmers to produce long-term sustainable produce and without debate to encourage social change in relation to our excessive meat consumption (in the context of it’s rate of depletion of the earth’s available resources).

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