We Can Create Food Systems That Enhance Human & Planetary Health

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Food systems around the world could be the model for low carbon production processes. Decarbonizing agricultural — as in so many other sectors — means to methodically transition from reliance on fossil fuels to low carbon energy sources.

We need to stop and ask, How is energy is produced to grow plants? What powers farm machinery? What kind of power is needed to process crops and transport them?

Energy-focused agricultural transitions are already underway. Agrivoltaics are becoming a common sight on many small farms; side-by-side crops and solar panels create a symbiosis that feeds energy needs and ecosystems. But lots more needs to be done.

Globally, the food system accounts for roughly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. Big Ag incorporates large volumes of manure, chemicals, antibiotics, and growth hormones to increase agricultural yields. These can contaminate nearby water sources and threaten aquatic ecosystems, biodiversity, nitrogen cycles and soil health. The world’s growing population will need food systems that can sustainably convert crop production into calories for human consumption.

It will take tackling a confluence of challenges facing people, nature, and climate.

The World Resources Institute warns that around 800 million people face hunger globally, and research shows the world will have to close a gap of 56% between the amount of food available today and that required by 2050. WRI reminds us that food systems are destroying the world’s ecosystems and fueling climate change. Agriculture uses almost half the world’s vegetated land, consumes 70% of freshwater withdrawals, drives deforestation in tropical nations and generates nearly one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Add to this the precarious state of our climate.

So, you say, why not take the net zero approach of transportation to electrify everything? The problem with agriculture lies beyond its production and reaches deeply into Scope 3 emissions.

Scope 3 emissions are those produced by a company’s customers and supply chain — both upstream (before) and downstream (after) its own operations. They typically account for around 80% of a company’s carbon footprint. Think fertilizers, refrigeration, logistics, and everyday consumer practices.

As Elena Bou writes in Forbes, “From fertilizers and farm machinery to processing plants, refrigeration and transport, nearly every calorie consumed is underpinned by energy-intensive infrastructure.” This interrelated structure, “from farm to fork,” is constructed on a foundation of “biological, industrial, and economic interdependencies that make its decarbonization uniquely systemic.”

Transforming food systems will be about much more than identifying new and innovative technologies to solve agricultural emissions — it will take concerted efforts from a variety of constituents groups to apply them to real world agriculture and food systems.

What does a Healthy Diet Look Like — for Ourselves and the Planet?

Transforming food systems to improve health amidst accelerating climate and environmental change is a critical global challenge. How can we translate science at the climate/ food/ health intersection into effective policy and practice? It would absolutely take a practical framework grounded in ecological systems. But all too often science is presented in ways that is utterly complicated and filled with jargon — it’s just not useful for the on-the-ground farmers and nutritionists and policymakers who need to implement it.

Food security, dietary quality, optimal nutrition, reduced burden of disease, and planetary health all have to be part of this translation. Food systems are embedded in and interact with other systems—such as environmental, economic, and political systems—and are influenced by a range of local, regional, and global actors. The authors of a March 2026 paper in Advances in Nutrition elaborate. “This will require different types of knowledge and cultures of valid evidence-gathering,” they describe, “from physical to social sciences to biological sciences to traditional indigenous knowledge,” as well as to integrate evidence at local, national, and global scales.

Instead of peer-reviewed articles, the working group concedes that researchers will need to convey the complex connections between climate change, food systems, diet, nutrition, and health with different language choices and on less familiar formats.

“Typically, science is disseminated through peer-reviewed academic journals. However, to influence policy and practice, scientific evidence must be communicated through multiple channels that speak directly to policymakers, advocates, and the public.”

Partnering and engaging with policymakers, practitioners, societal stakeholders, and people with lived experience relevant to the food system issue at hand are critical. That’s because researchers need guidance “to address relevant societal needs and understand the priorities, perspectives, frames of reference, and values of diverse stakeholders.”

In essence, the local political environment, economy, culture, geography, and scale matter when trying to solve fossil-fuel based hegemony in food systems.

Another Workaround from Big Oil?

Human pressures on the systems of land, soils, and fresh water have only been intensifying, just as they being pushed to their productive limits. The majority of pressures are derived from agriculture, including the increase in use of chemical (non-organic) inputs, uptake of farm mechanization, and overall impact of higher monocropping and grazing intensities are concentrated on a diminishing stock of agricultural land.

With the US/ Israel travesty taking place on the ground in Iran, domestic US gas prices have soared. To assuage consumer concerns, in a press statement dated March 25, 2026, the EPA said it has “issued a temporary emergency fuel waiver to allow nationwide sales of E15 — gasoline blended with 15% ethanol — and to remove all federal impediments to selling E10, gasoline blended with 10 percent ethanol, across the country.”

At this time of energy crossroads, many people are looking to viable alternatives to burning fossil fuels. Ethanol is a biofuel that is sourced from renewable biological materials like corn starch, corn stover, perennial grasses, woody biomass, and algae. Other biofuels are made from sugar crops (sugarcane, sugarbeet); starch crops (corn, potatoes); oilseed crops (soybean, sunflower, rapeseed); and animal fats. Most vehicles built after 2000 can use gasoline-ethanol blends containing up to 15% ethanol by volume. Currently there are about 3,500 fueling stations in the US that offer E-85 fuel, most of which are in the upper Midwest.

An April 2026 research study looked at the total calorie crop production from 2010 to 2020. For biofuels, it increased by 23.9%. Yet the increase of available calories in the food system for human consumption increased by only 16.6%. To feed a growing population, it is essential that the global agri-food system be managed to efficiently convert crop production into calories for human consumption.

Many agricultural experts concur that support for agriculture needs to focus on soil health, water quality, and climate resilience. By focusing on low carbon methods, enhancing circular nutrient management, and reinforcing soil regeneration, food systems can reduce risk, stabilize yield, and drive long term productivity.

Few agricultural inputs matter as much as fertilizer. Nitrogen fertilizers are essential to feeding the world, yet they remain one of the most energy-intensive parts of the food value chain, long reliant on fossil fuels. New low-carbon production routes can now sharply reduce emissions, decoupling fertilizer supply from fossil energy and strengthening food security.

From there, circularity determines whether those cleaner inputs are used efficiently or lost. Approaches like composting, digestate reuse, and biological crop protection help close nutrient loops. Smarter irrigation and drought-resilient crops further improve water efficiency, reinforcing soil ecosystems rather than depleting them.

Final Thoughts about Food Systems

Food has a crucial role in solving the climate crisis. Indeed, food, climate, and cleantech are coalescing as more power brokers become aware of the role that agriculture has to play in reducing food and climate impacts on greenhouse gas emissions. If you’ve followed me here on CleanTechnica, you know that I’m an advocate for plant-based diets as a fundamental step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

If beef consumption around the world was reduced to healthy quantities, as defined by the EAT-Lancet healthy reference diet, most calories currently lost in the food system could become available. That would be enough calories to support 1.23 billion people each year.

Harvard’s health newsletter recently contained a ringing endorsement of plant-based diets. The heart of our brain health and cognitive fitness program involves lifestyle changes, the publication states. Researchers at Harvard Medical School have identified six cornerstones to any effective brain health and cognitive fitness program.

Step 1: Eat a plant-based diet

Step 2: Exercise regularly

Step 3: Get enough sleep

Step 4: Manage your stress

Step 5: Nurture social contacts

Step 6: Continue to challenge your brain

As we think about plant-based diets, we also need to remember urban citizens who do not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Almost 50 million people in the US experienced some degree of food insecurity during 2024. The research indicates that 18.8 million, or 6.1% of the population, lived in a food desert more than a mile from a supermarket in urban areas, and 10 miles for rural locations.

Additionally, it’s important to protect agricultural workers, who are also more than 35 times more likely to die from exposure to extreme heat than workers from all other sectors combined. What measure should be in place to protect those agricultural workers who are willing to endure extreme heat so we can eat? Michelle Lewis asks us in the US Catholic magazine to honor the humanity of those whose work feeds us, “not to join in language or policies that would discard them.” She calls for a liberative theology of food — “we won’t sleep until everyone eats. It means we won’t stop working for the transformation the system needs.”

Resources

• “A dynamic 7-step program created to help you achieve a lifetime of robust cognitive fitness!” Harvard Medical School. 2025-2026.
• “A must-have for the times we live in: Fruit trees planted in a Florida ‘food desert’ counter soaring prices.” Richard Luscombe. The Guardian. March 22, 2026.
• “A theology of food must prioritize those who labor to produce it.” Michelle Lewis. US Catholic. April 15, 2026.
• “Biofuels and the environment.” EPA. January 5, 2026.
• “Creating a sustainable food future.” World Resources Institute.
• “Food access research atlas.” USDA. March 4, 2026.
• “Food is fossil fuel: The dirty energy secret on your plate.” Elena Bou. Forbes. January 28, 2026.
• “Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available as food for human consumption.” Paul C. West, et al. Environmental Research: Food Systems. April 7, 2026.
• “Translating science to improve health: A report from the ‘Agriculture and Diet: Value Added for Nutrition, Translation, and Adaptation in a Global Ecology’ (ADVANTAGE) project working group 5.” Donald Rose, et al. Advances in Nutrition. March 2026.