Glenn Croston, PhD. is passionate about the environment, writing extensively about the importance of finding solutions that ensure a bright, green future for the rest of the living world and for ourselves. With a PhD in biochemistry from UC San Diego, Croston himself is a green entrepreneur. After his college studies in biology, he worked for a year at a marine toxicology lab, studying the impact of oil spill cleanup agents on marine life along the central coast of California near Carmel.

Croston’s commitment to a more sustainable planet starts at home, in San Diego, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. Their lifestyle includes a hybrid car, solar panels, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and composting.

Croston is a member of Union of Concerned Scientists, NRDC, Sustainable Conservation and Environment California. He is also the founder of Starting Up Green.

Before 75 Green Businesses , Croston wrote and published several books in the biochemistry field.

Opportunities can be found in the strangest places, even in the health and environmental problems associated with our food. As difficult as these problems are, they are opportunities for entrepreneurs to create green businesses changing our food for the better. The old phrase says that every cloud has a silver lining, but maybe sometimes the lining is green.

In a US outbreak of salmonella stretching from May to August 2008, over 1400 individuals across 43 states were affected. The investigation to find the source of the outbreak searched far and wide through the global food distribution system until finally in late August, the Centers for Disease Control and the FDA reported the probable source of contamination, tracing it back to peppers imported from two farms in Mexico. These farms are not the whole story though. One culprit in this outbreak has not been fully credited: the long and twisted path food travels to our dinner plate.

Food was once eaten close to where it was grown, with minimal distance and few middlemen between the farm and the dinner plate. Today most US food travels over 1500 miles through a vast, global network of warehouses, trucks, ships, airplanes, processing plants, distribution centers, and grocery stores before finally reaching the consumer. This food journey affects food quality, consumer health, farm economies, and the environment. The complex trail food travels obscures its origin and severs the link between those who grow our food and individual consumers. A system like this is ripe for problems, but it is also ripe for entrepreneurial individuals to provide healthier and greener food.

The Local Food Trend

Consumers and businesses looking for alternatives to the current food system are increasingly turning to local food, reducing the distance and complexity of the path our food travels. Whereas the industrial food distribution system isolates farmers from consumers, selling locally produced food brings them closer together again. The steady rise in popularity of farmers’ markets and CSA (community supported agriculture) are signs of the growing local food trend. According to the USDA, the number of US farmer’s markets has grown from 1755 in 1994 to 4385 in 2006. At farmers’ markets, people can buy food directly from those who produce it, shaking their hand and talking about the food with them. They build a relationship week after week, and year after year, one built on trust and reliability. 

Local food is one of the opportunities for green entrepreneurs I describe in 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make a Difference, (Entrepreneur Press, August 2008). Grown closer to where it is sold, usually within a few hours drive or a 100 mile radius, local food is riper, tastes better, and may be richer in some nutrients. Local food may also be less prone to causing Salmonella or E.coil outbreaks. Compared to typical rock-hard grocery store peaches, locally grown summer peaches taste like you remember they should: fresh, sweet and juicy. The local food trend is not just for growers and farmers’ markets either. Entrepreneurs are feeding the growing local food trend with opportunities in restaurants, school lunches, local food distribution, and corporate cafeterias. Even Wal-Mart is buying more of their food closer to where it is sold to reduce transportation costs, planning to buy over $400 million of locally grown food in 2008.

In a way this trend is nothing new, but a return to the way most food was once sold, with a butcher shop selling local meat, a bakery selling local bread, and a grocery selling locally grown produce. Your local butcher shop is making a comeback, featuring locally grown beef, pork, and chicken in a shop where you can talk to people about where the meat came from and how it was raised. Local meat is often from animals raised with more sustainable methods as well, grazed on grass rather than fed corn in confined areas as is the standard practice. Raising meat is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than transportation, but grass-fed and sustainably grown meat has a greatly reduced environmental impact. I recently visited the La Jolla Butcher Shop in San Diego, featuring beef raised locally. Their local, grass-fed meat is not only healthy for consumers and good for the planet - it tastes great too.

Going Organic

Unfortunately the risk of illness is not the only problem with our food. The industrialization of agriculture has transformed farms into massive monocultures dependent on synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and other agricultural chemicals, as described in Michael Pollan’s excellent book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Intensive agricultural using conventional industrialized methods has depleted soils, contaminated water, damaged ecosystems, contributed to global warming, and exposed people to pervasive levels of chemicals with unknown long-term health consequences. Such significant problems hold massive opportunities to provide solutions.

The organic food movement got started as a response against the growing domination of our food by the industrial system. Its founders shared a vision of food that could be produced using sustainable methods, without the intensive use of chemicals, growing food in a way that would replenish rather than deplete soil. Where conventional growers long questioned whether organic agriculture would work, green leaders like Gary Hirshberg at Stonyfield Farm proved that not only was it possible to produce food using organic methods, but growing organic food is profitable as well. Starting out small, the organic food market has grown enormously, and was worth an estimated $20 billion in 2007 (Organic Trade Association).

The growth of organic food production is good for the environment, protecting land and people, and it also good for business. Organic food is increasingly common on grocery store shelves, in dairy cabinets, in the cereal aisle and in a broad array of produce. Yummy Earth is even producing organic lollipops. Despite the rapid growth of organic food sales, they are still only 3% of the overall food market, leaving vast opportunities ahead for new and innovative variations on organic food.

The Continuing Evolution of Food: Local, Organic, Sustainable, and Healthy

Even as the organic food market grows, there are a broad range of opportunities for a new generation of food businesses. Beyond local food, some food producers and consumers are starting to consider the impact of their products on climate change. Local food has a reduced transportation distance, but that’s no guarantee that it will have the lowest impact on climate change. Although local food reduces transportation of foods it may cause greenhouse gases to be emitted in other ways. New Zealand lamb raised on grass and shipped to the UK, for example, may have less of an overall impact on climate change that local lamb raised on energy-intensive grains. Tesco markets in the UK are starting to label products with their carbon footprint, allowing consumers to choose climate friendly products. With growing global urgency to take action on climate change, and consumers increasingly aware of this problem, the market for low-carbon grocery products is likely to grow.

Fast food is not generally great for our health or the planet, but entrepreneurs are starting to tackle this market as well, providing greener and healthier alternatives. Zen Burger in New York is offering vegetarian, healthy alternatives to hamburgers, and Pizza Fusion is opening franchises around the country offering organic pizzas served in a green restaurant or delivered with a hybrid car.

The list of opportunities goes on. As large as the problems are, entrepreneurs continue finding new ways to solve them. Even as organic food production grows, a new generation of farmers is raising the bar for sustainable food production to the next level. Producers of heritage crops are restoring diversity to farms, stores, and plates, and possibly providing for the future health of our crops. For every environmental problem we face, there are opportunities for businesses that can provide solutions building a brighter and sustainable future for us all.

How Full is Your Glass?

The problems with our food are large but not insoluble. Many of the solutions needed are available today, with increasing numbers of consumers and businesses working together to create more sustainable food. While a great of progress has been made only a small fraction of the food we grow and eat is organic and sustainably produced, leaving many opportunities for new businesses ahead. For those wanting to make money and make a difference in our health and our planet, now is the time to get started with a business providing greener food.

The End of Food

Why Buy Locally Grown Produce?

Can A Warmer Planet Feed Us?

Update on Sep 5, 2008 by At Basil & Spice

Reuters!

Atlanta Journal-Constitution