But let me start with just giving you a sense of the core
unsustainability of our current food system.
And this is from an assessment that was done of what they call
the Nine Planetary Boundaries.
And these are aspects of our world which are, to varying degrees, threatened.
So the inner circle there, it's in green if you have color,
is the safe operating space.
Anything below that boundary is considered safe,
the middle circle is increasing risk, and then the red is a high risk zone.
The one's that are not colored are one's where we don't yet
necessarily have enough information to assess.
So take a look at climate change because I think that's really important.
When you look at that, we basically only go halfway into that middle circle.
And, as we all know, climate change has been thought of, and is described,
as one of the major threats that our planet faces.
And it's been described as the biggest health threat that exists.
And yet that one's only halfway into the yellow, indicating an increasing risk.
We have two areas where we're well into that outer circle, and
one of them is what they call biogeochemical flows.
And that's the flows of phosphorus and nitrogen, much of which is used for
fertilization of our plants.
We're using so much of it,
we've really disrupted a lot of the cycles that keep those elements in balance.
And then the second one that's all the way out there is biosphere integrity.
And in particular there, they're talking about biodiversity loss.
So there's so
many species that have become extinct or that are heading towards extinction.
That's all the way out there as being basically in this severe,
high-risk zone for long-term planetary health.
Now, the other thing I want to point out about this is
if you see the sections with circles around them,
all of those are areas that basically have something to do with food.
So ocean acidification, that's our seafood.
I mentioned the biogeochemical flows in our fertilizers.
There's freshwater use, there's our agriculture, land system change,
biosphere integrity and climate change.
So that's basically six out of the nine that are very directly related to
the sustainability of our food system.
And the other three could be said to be also.