Building a stronger and more resilient food system, from soil to spoon, will require a big picture perspective. Agroecology, the science that considers how farms fit into surrounding ecosystems, is a useful lens to evaluate food systems, as it considers not only sustainability of agricultural practices, but also how these practices support thriving farms and communities, as well as reliable, equitable access to healthy foods.
To gain insight into how the US is faring when it comes to agroecology, we conducted an analysis across all 50 states. Based on expert knowledge and past work, we developed a list of indicators of agricultural ecology (e.g., nutrient loading, erosion, water conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, crop diversity, conservation agriculture, etc.) as well as additional farm, food, health, and equity metrics. Variables were only included if relevant data were publicly available at the state level. Units for select data were adjusted to ensure the most meaningful comparisons, when applicable. To aggregate variables with widely ranging units, all data were normalized linearly from 0-1 using minimum and maximum values among all states for each variable. Variables were further organized into groups and combined to calculate a series of food system scores.
Results/Conclusions
We identified over 70 variables to serve as indicators for agroecosystem health, healthy food, and equity within the food system. We found that many states with high scores in agroecosystem variables also scored well in food-related variables (for example, Vermont, California, and Maine), and vice versa, but this was not always the case. For example, Montana had a relatively high score for food, but not agricultural, variables. Similarly, some states had relatively low scores for agricultural, but not food, variables (for example, Iowa and Nevada). At the regional scale, some regions performed better than others within select categories only; for example, the Northeast region had above-average scores for regional food system infrastructure, but below-average scores for equity. However, variability among states within all regions suggests potential areas of opportunity for neighboring states. Finally, we found very limited data available to assess equitable aspects of food systems at the state-level, and did not find evidence of any strong relationships between equity and either food or agroecosystem variables. While this analysis pointed to strengths and weaknesses in food system sustainability in the US, more regularly updated, high-quality data across all categories would be needed to improve future assessments.