By Marzia De Giuli
PARMA, Italy, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The food industry has a responsibility to get involved in environmental protection, an ecology expert told Xinhua during an international food fair that ended Thursday.
"Until a short time ago, when the planet was not so developed and populated, we did not address the problem of our diet's impact on natural resources, but today we know the fundamental importance of the connection between food and environment," Riccardo Valentini, an ecology professor at the University of Tuscia in Viterbo, said.
The professor said agriculture accounted for about 26 percent of greenhouse gases at the global level, both directly through the massive use of fertilizers and indirectly through deforestation.
During Cibus, the four-day fair, which takes place every two years in this northern city, a "Milan protocol" was launched that enshrines the principle of international coordinated action to address sustainability of the global food system.
A third of global food production, the document noted, was used to feed livestock. Of the seven billion people on earth, one billion are without access to drinking water, yet 15,000 liters of water are needed for the production of a single kilogram of beef.
"When crude oil was first discovered, during the Second Industrial Revolution, the availability of low-cost energy was a fundamental driver for the global fertilizer industry, thus intensive agriculture," Valentini told Xinhua in an interview during the fair.
"Today, if you look at a graphic of greenhouse gases, you see carbon dioxide caused by oil, nitrous oxide for which fertilizers are responsible, and methane produced by livestock. Unfortunately, this accelerating chain is increasing global pollution," the professor noted.
For this reason, Valentini stressed, the world's "big challenge" in the coming years would be choosing between the two models of intensive agriculture and sustainable agriculture.
In fact, the professor underlined, sustainable agriculture practices, from precision farming and drip system irrigation to organic packaging and environmental certification, "not only are respectful of citizens, but also create economic growth."
In recent years, important progress had been made in the direction of sustainable agriculture as innovations and technologies were introduced to penetrate the big distribution chains, he said.
"This is the right road to take for the good of mankind, and I especially wish that food industries in countries which are developing very fast, such as China, will play a central role in succeeding with this challenge," Valentini said.