Step One: Freeze Agriculture’s Footprint

whenever we’ve needed to produce more food, we’ve simply cut down forests or plowed grasslands to make more farms. We’ve taken over even more land, an area roughly the size of Africa. Agriculture’s footprint has caused the loss of whole ecosystems around the globe,

But we can no longer afford to increase food production through agricultural expansion.

Trading tropical forest for farmland is one of the most destructive things we do to the environment, and it is rarely done to benefit the 850 million people in the world who are still hungry.

Most of the land cleared for agriculture in the tropics does not contribute much to the world’s food security but is instead used to produce cattle, soybeans for livestock, timber, and palm oil. Avoiding further deforestation must be a top priority.

• Step Two: Grow More on Farms We’ve Got
• Step Three: Use Resources More Efficiently
• Step Four: Shift Diets
• Step Five: Reduce Waste

Addressing our global food challenges demands that all of us become more thoughtful about the food we put on our plates. We need to make connections between our food and the farmers who grow it, and between our food and the land, watersheds, and climate that sustain us. As we steer our grocery carts down the aisles of our supermarkets, the choices we make will help decide the future