The myth of sustainable food supply and the urgent need for radical change from competitive corporatism to sustainable stewardship

Abstract

Stable societies depend upon sustainable food supplies for their very existence. However, very few food sources or food supply chains have been independently certified as truly sustainable. As world food demand goes up and supply goes down, sustainable food supply is a myth for both the poor and the rich. Instead, there is widespread ignorance regarding the dangers of the present ‘profit-only’ driven world food supply system. These dangers are concealed behind a confusing array of mostly unreliable and misleading green claims and green labels. In the transition to a sustainable future, there is an urgent need for world food business to change from a competitive corporate paradigm to a sustainable stewardship paradigm. There is also an urgent need for an independent, incorruptible, and universal green label that can authenticate, on one consistent and reliable platform, all types of truly sustainable foods and food supply chains world-wide. This chapter will discuss these issues, how paradigm change might occur, and how the brand family of Green Tick® ‘Sustainable’, ‘Natural’, ‘Organic’, ‘Carbon Neutral’, ‘Carbon Negative’, ‘GE-Free’ and ‘Fair Trader’ meet the need for an incorruptible and universal ‘green’ label for food and food supply chains.